Author: Ethan Theo

Abe WalkingBear Sanchez is an International Speaker / Trainer / Consultant on the subject of cash flow / sales enhancement and business knowledge organization and use. Founder and President of www.armg-usa.com, WalkingBear has authored hundreds of business articles, has worked with numerous companies in a wide range of industries since 1982 and has spoken at many venues including the Shakespeare Globe Theater in London.

Categories
Operations

Mission Statement

mission%20statement.jpg
Business Oppotunities: Every company should have a mission statement, which encapsulates in one sentence your business’s core aims.
An example of a mission statement is Levi Strauss’s: “We will market the most appealing and widely worn casual clothing in the world. We will clothe the world.” Or Wal-Mart’s: “To give ordinary folk the chance to buy the same thing as rich people.”
Unable to think of any more, I thought I’d see if I can guess a few others.
Subway
For every man, woman and child to never be more than five yards from a Subway sandwich.
Nike
To spend more on advertising than the GDP of several small countries put together.
Wetherspoons
To make a lack of atmosphere a proviso of a cheap pint.
Pizza Express
For new customers to be pleasantly surprised at the standard of décor and food in a restaurant which has ‘Express’ in its name.
Statement of Intent [Business Oppotunities]

Categories
Work Life

Riches Begin In The Mind

brain.jpg
Business Advice Pro: It’s writing down your goals with specific deadlines, writing down your goals like you have already achieved it all. And then rewriting them twice a day, or even if not rewriting them then at least reading them again twice a day with thought.
Why? You’re a 9-5 worker or you’re not doing very well. It’s very hard to imagine and actually start believing that you can earn a million dollars a year. It is, I know. So somehow you need to put that thought to your unconsciousness and that’s why you need this written list and that’s why you need to read it again and again and again and again. Yes, I know, I used to think this was really stupid as well. But it ain’t.
There’s also certain things you need to think of, certain things you need to achieve in order to become successful. You need to have a positive mental attitude, sound physical health, you need to be free from fear or at least be able to use it to your benefit, hope and belief in future achievements, open mind, self-discipline. Riches start with a state of mind.
Keeping your goals in mind [Business Advice Pro]

Categories
How-To Guides

How To Thrive As A Small Startup

best_video_rental.jpgForbes: Big video-rental chains have been kicking small shops in the teeth for years–which makes Christine Min’s feat all the more impressive. Last month Min celebrated the first-year anniversary of her store, Get Reel Video, in Brooklyn, N.Y. Better yet, she is already in the black.
Carve out a niche. If you don’t have the muscle to go head to head in a given product line, try another. While the big chains generate roughly 85% of their revenues from new releases, Nolan Anaya, owner of Amherst, Mass.-based Captain Video, aims for more like 50%.
Customer service matters. Wu, a movie buff, says he can take a chance on stocking unusual titles because his customers value his recommendations. “I started recommending it, and it’s become our No. 1 renter of all time.
Offer complementary products. To boost sales, some small retailers have branched into pizza, phone retailing and even fake tanning. “So many people put blinders on and think of themselves as a video rental store,” says Ken Dorrance, owner of Alameda, Calif.-based Video Station, which also peddles pizza and, starting this year, cellphones.
Craft flexible payment schemes. When Blockbuster did away with late fees two years ago, Alan Milligan, owner of Memphis-based Marquee Movies, responded by letting his customers prepay for rentals and rack up points, similar to a credit card rewards program. “We had to become creative,” he says. “We’re all learning how to react to the changing market.” The free popcorn doesn’t hurt either.
The Rebirth Of The Small Video-Rental Shop [Forbes]

Categories
Business Ideas

Rent a Duck

duck.jpgBusinesspundit: If you want to be an entrepreneur but need a business idea, consider renting ducks. It’s apparently doing very well in Germany.
Germans are lining up to rent farm animals to help with the gardening as part of a new green scheme. Werner Kiwitt, who runs an ecological park in Schleswig-Holstein, is offering sheep to cut the grass and ducks to eat the slugs.
He said: “You get free fertiliser provided by the animals as well, so it’s not a bad deal.”
Who would have thought you could turn sheep and duck doo into a selling point? Now that’s a good entrepreneur.
Weird Business Ideas: Rent a Duck [Businesspundit]

Categories
Online Business

Domain Name Factor

domainname.jpg
BusinessWeek: Startups scrambling for domain names—the shorter and catchier, the better—find themselves in negotiations with owners of desirable Web addresses. Andrew Frame had several criteria for the name of his VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) startup. It had to be universally pronounceable, memorable, and short—ideally, no more than four letters and two syllables. Of course, the dot-com domain name also had to be available.
Some of these quirkily named young startups—Bebo, the social-networking site, and Etsy, the online crafts marketplace, for example—have caught on. Yet the naming trend has also drawn considerable eye-rolling among Web denizens, inspiring tongue-in-cheek pages like Web 2.0 Name Generator and the quiz “Web 2.0 or Star Wars Character?”
Among these domain-name buyers is Steve Luo, a hardware engineer from California. Luo started buying up four-letter domains early last year after he noticed that the relative scarcity of four-letter domains meant that even random combinations like rmnd.com were selling for many times the $9 or so they cost to register. Luo now owns several thousand four-letter domains, which as of recently included peeb.com ($4,000), qurr.com ($400), and wwuw.com ($900).
The idea that shorter domain names are more memorable, more “brandable,” and therefore more valuable has become so widely accepted that many entrepreneurs take it for granted. Domain-name reseller Sedo advises buyers that “a shorter domain means reduced risk of typo errors, easier memorability, faster type-ins, and more flexibility in promoting the domain. For these reasons, most businesses who can afford it buy a domain of five characters or less.” But are those businesses really getting what they pay for?
Does Success Hinge on a Domain Name? [BusinessWeek]