11 Things I Wish I Knew When I Started My Business | Medium.com

August 14, 2014August 13, 2014 ~ lmehit ~ Leave a comment

A lot of people like to fool you and say that you’re not smart if you never went to college, but common sense rules over everything. That’s what I learned from selling crack. -Snoop Dogg

My name is Stephanie St.Claire, and I am an unfunded entrepreneur. I’ve been in business for 4 years, after engaging in my own personal and tenuous renaissance uh…divorce and rediscovering my Divine Core Purpose. In other words, I grew a pair of ladyballs and started living the life I always wanted to while making money doing it.

But there was a LOT to learn, and some of those things weren’t covered in Who Moved My Cheese. Throw these 4 rockstars into a blender, and you’ll have a composite sketch of me in the first three months of my business:

Glitter was literally shooting out of my eye sockets as I quit my PR firm job and started my own business. Full of optimism, living in New York City, and surrounded by a tribe of friends who were also launching businesses, art, and gigs, I felt it was the perfect time to make the bold move to entrepreneurship. I was now officially Living My Dream and Working For Myself which meant that I was In Charge of My Financial Destiny and Captain of My Promising Future.

10 Essential Tips for Email Marketing Campaigns|businessnewsdaily.com

August 14, 2014August 13, 2014 ~ lmehit ~ Leave a comment

Email has become one of the easiest ways for businesses to reach their customers. Cost-effectiveness, shareability and the speed of message delivery have made email campaigns a critical component of most businesses’ marketing strategies. However, with the increasing popularity of email marketing comes a greater risk that messages will be blocked from your customers’ inboxes. Info group, a provider of business data and marketing solutions, offered 10 tips to help small businesses create successful email marketing campaigns:

5 Reasons Your Business Needs Your Story | Getentrepreneurial.com

August 13, 2014August 12, 2014 ~ lmehit ~ Leave a comment

You may have heard it said ‘Stories Sell’. It’s true. We really connect to a good story and it’s a proven marketing and sales tactic. You know this instinctively, you only buy something when you really ‘believe’ it. And you can take any example from your own life. Think about the last purchase you made; what was the pitch? What did you believe when you bought it? I can guarantee you, it was a great story.

However, I’m not writing about new ‘tactics’ here. I want to write about something much more authentic and personal than the latest proven business building gimmick.

And what’s this got to do with your business? Well you can be the very best in the world at what you do but if you can’t sell your services, you simply don’t have a business.

Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing |ducttapemarketing.com

August 13, 2014August 12, 2014 ~ lmehit ~ Leave a comment

B2B lead generation seems to be a mystery to many marketers. Just do a search on the topic and you’ll find little that’s helpful.

In my opinion, there are two reasons for this. One – people are searching for that one killer lead tactic that will mask all ills or, Two – people fail to realize that successful B2B lead generation is made up of activities that are by nature very hard to quantify and pin down.

The latter then leads to plenty of articles spouting the virtues of practices such as inbound marketing and content marketing, but little hard advice on how to make any of it pay.

Here’s my take – the real problem lies in the fact that you don’t simply generate a lead today, you guide it.

You can no longer run an ad that say’s “hey, we’ve got what you’re looking for come and get it” and expect much. Once a prospect actually knows what they are looking for, they’re already looking for a price.

Top Ways To Market Your New Business Idea | CoolBusinessIdeas.com

August 13, 2014August 12, 2014 ~ lmehit ~ Leave a comment

Marketing a new business idea can be a difficult task and should be done with care and precision to target the correct audience in a way that is both effective and affordable. However, with a little planning and an array of effective techniques in your marketing arsenal, you’ll stand a good chance at advertising success – here are some great ways to market your new business idea to get you the exposure you need.

Presentation Packs

Whether you are trying to get some investors on board or are looking to help others gain awareness of your product or service, tailored presentation packs are a great way to do this. They contain all of the relevant information needed on the product or service and you can include a sample depending on what it is, as well as some merchandising goods used to entice clients and investors and establish your brand.

Your Unwanted Gift Cards–These Guys Are Building An Empire With Them | Forbes.com

August 1, 2014 ~ lmehit ~ Leave a comment

Inside a dim office secured by a sensor lock, eight young men in yarmulkes sit before computer screens sifting through tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of gift cards. Toiling under a latticed ceiling, the workers some in their late teens field orders to buy pre-owned cards online, fetching each meticulously catalogued item from the company’s man-size vault, where at least $3 million worth wait for new owners at any given time.

Once assembled, orders are carried to a shipping and receiving room beneath the vault chamber, where another group of skullcapped employees mails them out. Newly acquired gift cards are scanned to check their value, catalogued and bar-coded for easy search. “You’ve got to find that exact card, and you’ve got to find it quickly,” says Elliot Bohm, CEO and co-founder of CardCash.com , a company in Lakewood, N.J. that grossed $56 million last year buying and reselling the gift cards that nobody wanted.

5 Questions To Ask Before Going Into Business With A Friend|Forbes

July 9, 2014 ~ lmehit ~ Leave a comment

Pamela Skaist-Levy and Gela Nash-Taylor, co-presidents and co-founders of Juicy Couture became famous for their celebrated casual clothing line, which they went on to sell in 2013 for a whopping $195 million. Sure, their story of success has had its share of ups and downs—like any other business—but according to the best friends, the greatest decision they ever made was to go into business together. Noted Skaist-Levy, “You spend more time with a business partner than almost anyone…When you’re together, the highs are even higher and the lows don’t seem so bad.”

As great as this kind of 50/50 arrangement sounds, so many partnerships, especially among friends, don’t survive. In fact if you research how to start a business with a friend, you’ll see that expert after expert likens business partnership to marriage: Are you willing to hang in there with this person through the celebrations and failures? The curveballs and the monotony? Can you accept that the little things about them that may annoy you now could only magnify under stress?

Bureau of Labor Statistics Chart | Industry Employment

July 8, 2014July 7, 2014 ~ lmehit ~ Leave a comment

How well are U.S. industries recovering from the last recession? Data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics BLS show that most industries added jobs between June 2009 and March 2014, a period spanning the end of the recession into the ongoing recovery.

Private service-providing industries added 7.2 million jobs, compared with 0.5 million for goods-producing industries over that period. But, as the chart shows, the mining and logging industry had the greatest percent increase in employment. The next largest percent increase, by nearly half, was for professional and business services. Employment fell in three of the 13 industries in the chart—construction, utilities, and information.

The employment data in the chart are from the BLS Current Employment Statistics program. For more information, visit http://www.bls.gov/ces or call 202 691-6555.

Pop Goes the Algorithm | wfs.org

July 7, 2014 ~ lmehit ~ Leave a comment

As a musician and writer, Ben Novak drove the car he could afford in 2004: a 1993 Nissan Bluebird. The vehicle propelled him around his hometown of Auckland, New Zealand, just fine. Novak’s main complaint about the car concerned its radio, which could capture only two FM stations out of the dozens broadcasting in the city. As somebody who spent every spare minute imbibing or playing music, Novak found this no minor aggravation. But he didn’t have money for a new car, so he left the dial fixed on the BBC, his only acceptable option.

Being stuck on the BBC had its benefits. Novak was well armed for cocktail conversation on current events, and he could always crack off a new piece of intellectual fodder when chitchat grew stale. More important, he didn’t miss a short BBC report on technology developed in Spain that, the person being profiled claimed, could predict which songs would turn into pop hits.

Starbucks Brings Back Lemon Cake After Customers Gripe | Bloomberg

June 9, 2014 ~ lmehit ~ Leave a comment

Starbucks Corp. is bringing back the sliced lemon cake.

After the coffee chain bought gourmet-baking company La Boulange in 2012, it used the acquisition to add fancier pastries to U.S. locations. Now Starbucks is discovering that some customers liked the food better before, prompting another round of retooling.

“We’ve got a few products that we are going to bring back from the old menu,” Troy Alstead, chief operating officer for Seattle-based Starbucks, said in an interview. “Some customers missed a few things.

”Starting this week, the company will begin reverting to selling slices of banana, pumpkin and iced-lemon loaf cake — old favorites — in its U.S. stores. Starbucks will be using new La Boulange recipes and existing suppliers to create food that more closely resembles its previous fare.

Getting the menu right is critical to Starbucks’ U.S. growth strategy. In a saturated coffee market, the company is trying to entice more customers to add a pastry or croissant to their latte orders. Starbucks also faces mounting breakfast competition from fast-food chains: McDonald’s Corp. has been offering pastries at some locations this year, and everyone from Taco Bell to Burger King is trying to boost morning sales.