MyEntre.Net Iowa Small Business Blog - Business Planning

Is your business accessible?

Rob Williams — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 12:17:00 -3650

A couple of weeks ago, I sprained my ankle. While this did put a major dent in my weekend activities, I still managed to go out to eat and do a little shopping. I’m glad I decided to go out, because it really helped me find a new appreciation for businesses who go out of their way to make themselves more accessible. I started to take mental notes as I hobbled to and from various store locations about how they could improve their businesses to be more disabled person friendly, and I thought I would share some of my thoughts with all of you business owners. If you are a disabled person, please chime in with other suggestions for things you would like to see business owners do to make their businesses more friendly for you.

1) Make aisle ways much more wide to accommodate those in wheelchairs or crutches so that navigating between tables and chairs is as easy as possible. You might even ask someone who has crutches to go through your business to find trouble areas- they may not always be apparent just by doing a quick glance around, especially when chairs are not back to back as often happens in restaurants.

2) Train staff to respond appropriately when someone with a disability enters your store. For instance, I went to a local restaurant with my Girlfriend last weekend, and the server sat us way too far from the buffet. With just a few questions, that hostess could have easily determined that we were there for the buffet and could have placed us accordingly. In some restaurants, specific tables close to bathrooms, buffet tables, etc, are reserved for persons with disabilities.

3) Doors and their threshold areas can be a real hurdle. Wheelchairs can easily get caught and individuals with crutches have a very difficult time holding a door while trying to navigate through the passageway. If you can prop doors open, do so. If you can redesign your doorway so it has a low-profile threshold, even better. Here again, is an area where you can train employees to help if they see someone trying to enter a business- even if it’s not yours, but close enough for the employee to run over to provide assistance.

4) Having a place mat right outside or inside the doorway to your business can be bad if it is not securely affixed to the ground. Crutches hinge on a very small two inch area. If the floor mat is not secure, a crutch can easily slide the mat away thus causing serious injury. Keep in mind however, that not having a mat can be just as bad. Crutches not only slip easily on unsecured mats, but will also betray their users on any smooth, non-carpeted surfaces if their bottom rubber knobs become wet. If you couldn't tell from my tone here, I learned this tip the hard way.

5) If your business is positioned near a street (like on a downtown drag or similar) have the city look into creating curb cuts in front of your store. Individuals who need easy access to a sidewalk from a street look for these entrance points. If nothing else, you might at least gain their traffic in front of your store, even if they decide not to patronize your business.

These are just a few things that I’ve run into in my short time using crutches. If you have other ideas, please share them in the comments section. Also, there are a number of laws that businesses must be aware of regarding accessibility. For a review of the legal requirements for business accessibility, visit the Americans with Disabilities Act homepage.

Improving Our Services for Iowa Small Businesses

Rob Williams — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 17:08:00 -3650

Republished with Permission
Article by Jim Olson, Associate Director for the Iowa Waste Reduction Center
University of Northern Iowa

In the Loop Newsletter - July 9, 2010 - Vol. 1, Issue 1

It is my pleasure to re-introduce you to the Iowa Waste Reduction Center and the current services we offer. We are also working on new services we hope will benefit the businesses we serve and enhance the efficiency of the center. Our premier service remains the On-Site Review program where we visit client facilities to evaluate current practices and provide recommendations for improved waste management, pollution prevention and regulatory compliance. This review encompasses solid waste, hazardous waste, air emissions, storm water, universal waste, etc.

To date, we have conducted more than 4,300 of these visits. We have recently updated our web site to make it more appealing and user friendly. The site contains descriptions of our services, relevant links, an extensive list of regulatory summaries, service provider lists and other resources. Please visit the site at www.iwrc.org and see for yourself.

We continue to provide environmental-related workshops; most recently for businesses that will be impacted by the new National Emission Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants (NESHAP) regulations. We also welcome the opportunity to provide presentations to association and business groups on topics of interest.

Finally, we remain available to take your calls and emails and provide answers to your questions. Our professional staff has more than 100 years of combined environmental experience and is just a 319-273-8905 call.

As I mentioned previously, we are also looking at ways to expand and continually improve our services. This enhanced “In-the-Loop” newsletter is an example. I trust you will find the format appealing and the information and articles more relevant and interesting. IWRC staff will be writing articles for each edition and we will solicit guest articles as well. In order to help us provide articles of interest, please email (olsonj@uni.edu) me any topics you would find interesting and we’ll do our best to respond.

Finally, we are investigating other means and technologies to provide information and services to a larger population of small businesses and the general public. It is our hope to continue to provide the services you have become accustomed to and to develop new and more efficient assistance delivery means to meet future demands.

On behalf of all the staff and students at the IWRC, I encourage you to use our services, I thank you for your interest and support, and I wish you a productive and enjoyable summer.

The Iowa Waste Reduction Center is a program of Business and Community Services, a division of the College of Business Administration at the University of Northern Iowa.

For 22 years, the IWRC has provided free and confidential environmental assistance for Iowa small businesses!

Entrepreneurial Insights

Maurie Cashman — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 01:42:00 -3650

This Friday, July 16 at 1 p.m.we will discuss Valuations- An Advanced Discussion with Accredited Senior Appraiser, Darren Mize of GCF Valuation, M&A Advisor and Valuation software developer and instructor Mike Adhikari of Business Value Xpress (BVX) and Illinois Corporate Investments Inc., and Financial Analyst Andrew Blazenko

Great Video about B2B Marketing

Rob Williams — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 16:05:00 -3650

New Disaster Preparedness Website

Rob Williams — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 21:24:00 -3650

Those of you who have been following my blog postings know that I am fond of writing about tips for disaster preparedness, so this post shouldn’t come as any surprise to you. The SBA just sent out a press release (PDF) concerning a new website they are marketing called Prepare my Business.

In an effort to encourage businesses to plan ahead, the SBA has teamed with Agility Recovery Solutions, a firm that has provided business continuity and disaster recovery tools to small companies for 21 years. Today the SBA and Agility launched the Prepare My Business (www.preparemybusiness.org) Web site. Prepare My Business provides tips on how small business owners can develop their own disaster preparedness plans, and features interactive tools such as monthly webinars on business continuity planning.[Excerpt from the SBA Press Release]

After searching around the site, it looks pretty good and it’s worth taking out some time to check out. The site itself is more a clearing house of links to external resources regarding disaster planning. One aspect I particularly liked was the check list for actually testing your disaster plan. I haven’t come across anything like that before and thought it was particularly helpful.

Feel free to post other resources for business disaster preparedness below.

Google Places

Rob Williams — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 18:43:00 -3650

Google allows you to take control over your business listing in their search results. Even if you don’t have a website, this is an excellent way to ensure your business is findable on the web.

Lots of Driving, Lots of Radio!

Rob Williams — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 05:06:00 -3650

This past week I’ve logged over 1,000 miles on the road (went to a conference in Kansas City & went up north to hang out with some friends). With this much time in the car, I was able to listen to a whole lot of radio. I heard a couple of good programs and found a neat local radio station down in Kansas City.

The radio station I found in Kansas City was Gen X radio based out of Mission, Kansas (http://www.997kiss.com). I kid you not when I say every song they played seemed to come right from my own iPod playlist! Although I’m technically part of the Generation Y cohort- this radio station was great and I found it interesting that they are using the Gen X branding for their station. As soon as I heard their announcer say Gen X radio- I knew I had found my local favorite for the area. Is the name of your business consistent to your target market? If you are just starting up- consider your business name carefully- Gen X radio is much better than ‘Rob’s Easy Listening KBCD FM’.

The other cool thing I learned about on the radio came from a specific program, Brian Gongol on WHO AM 1040 (http://www.whoradio.com/pages/briangongol.html). He was talking about what value top paid CEOs really bring to the table for the companies they work for. He posed the very interesting question, what could a company do with all the money they are paying for their CEO? The specific example they used was CBS’s CEO who is being paid $43.2 million dollars. Brian posed the point that with the $43.2 million, CBS could hire 432 people at $100,000 a piece (twice the national median household income). The question then becomes, is CBS’s CEO worth 432 very well-paid individuals? I had never heard that point of view expressed before, and found it to be incredibly intriguing to think about. Next time you hear CEO’s defending their pay on TV, think to yourself, are they really doing the same work of 400-plus people making $100,000?

Anyway, just thought I would share the thought. What do you think? Is anyone’s work ever really worth multi-millions?

Duracell Battery Company & The Power of Targeted Ads

Rob Williams — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 04:39:00 -3650

I couldn’t believe my own TV when I was watching the History channel, as I am prone to do, and heard ‘Iowa Lakes Community College’ in the same sentence as the national brand ‘Duracell.’ The Small Business Consultant in me instantly looked up to see what the heck was going on, but I was too late. Needless to say I didn’t change the channel for the next hour until I caught the commercial again and was able to watch it in its entirety. After I watched it, I was floored. Here was a big name national brand conducting some localized, targeted advertising!

I forgot about it and eventually grew tired of watching the commercial, at least until I came here to Missouri for the Heartland Economic Development Conference. One of the big themes this year has been economic development marketing. While I was reading some of my economic development material, what did I overhear on my TV but another Duracell commercial, this time talking about how AirLife Denver (the local emergency/rescue choppers that they send in to transport trauma victims) uses Duracell batteries to power their night vision goggles & emergency hand-held life meters. After waiting another hour later to watch this commercial in detail, I knew I had to write about this.

After some online research, I found two articles about these commercials and began to put the dots together. You can read these articles for yourself at: http://www.letsgodigital.org/en/10558/duracell_advertising_campaign/, andhttp://www.esthervilledailynews.com/page/content.detail/id/505079.html?nav=5003 (note of caution, the first article appears to be more promotional than educational). Duracell has been running these commercials with a keen targeted marketing strategy they are calling their ‘trusted everywhere’ campaign. It seems that they are finding localized areas to highlight how their product is routinely put to the test in everyday (mission critical) situations. I wish I had the numbers, although I would venture to guess that this campaign has been pretty successful, considering the fact that they have been continuing to run with it.

What does all of this mean?

What are you doing as a small business owner to illustrate that you are selling more than just your products to the public? The same question could be posed to Economic Development office Directors. In one of our sessions today, Ronnie talked about how important it is to sell more than a product (in our case the community)- it’s all about selling the relationship. As small business owners, you must strive to do the same. It shouldn’t be about how you sell the cheapest widget (i.e. Wal-Mart) or the highest quality widget (i.e. Best Buy), but rather a narrative about how the community has trusted you for years when it comes to serving their widget buying needs.

As a real-world case in point, Cedar Falls Utilities has been running ads locally featuring Angela one of their business advertising representatives (if I remember correctly). Their commercial structure has been the same. First they feature a local retailer talking about how they weren’t sure where to start when it came to TV advertising, then how they spoke with how they found Angela and everything came together smoothly. It wraps up with a picture of Angela and a compelling quote from the small business owner imploring others to call Angela to “talk about their marketing needs today.” If that’s not compelling, I just don’t know what is- especially if you know the featured retailer.

What types of things are you doing as business owners’ to feature how you have had a positive impact on your community? Do you feature compelling client quotes on your website? In fact, we have been recently approached by two different firms asking for quotes- are you asking your key customers? If you’re not, you should be aware that your competitors are! As an aside, I found a terrific website that talked about how compelling quotes should be structured (http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2006/02/rethinking_test.html), in case you’re wondering. As times continue to be tight and marketers shift toward the regionalism movement, it’s important to rely on your best sources for referrals. Please comment below and let us know your thoughts!

A Good Balance Today at Heartland – Day 3

Rob Williams — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 02:26:00 -3650

LaDene Bowen started the day right off this morning with Strategic Planning. This was a topic that I thought I knew a lot about- turns out I was wrong. LaDene really opened my eyes to the power of transforming your strategic plan into a living document. For some reason, I always equated strategic planning with something that you do every five years because everyone tells you it’s a good idea and about the time it begins to grow mold in your desk drawer (or five years later, whichever comes first) you pull it out and review it. It seems silly but even while studying this in college, we never discussed the ‘how’ part of implementing your strategic goals to achieve real-world positive outcomes. The very bottom of the strategic planning structure was always lost on me. One of the take home messages I learned was that once you get down to the objective level, it is absolutely critical to assign those objectives to specific people or agencies who can then become accountable for the successful deployment of that directive utilizing the plan as intended- as a roadmap.

Besides the duh moment I had during LaDene’s presentation, I also came away with some outstanding resource material- in fact, the best offered thus far. Included with her handouts was a sheet on consensus building exercises. Here are three great ideas for activities economic developers can use with their staff, or that you can use with your business staff to help you with your strategic planning efforts.

Idea Writing- Here you start with posing a trigger question such as: What are you most proud of in our community? Everyone participating writes down their thoughts on a sheet of paper, then after a couple of minutes passes it to the person next to them. Once you receive the other person’s response to the trigger question, you can edit, add, or highlight points that you think are valuable. You continue to pass the sheet all around then when you get your original response back, the moderator can launch into a discussion of what everyone wrote and why.
Mind Mapping – Similar to the Idea Writing exercise, you start with a trigger question and everyone responds with a very short sentence written on a notecard. Once collected, the moderator sticks the notes up on the wall and with yarn connects the various responses to try to determine ideas through the mapping process. This very visual process can be great if you have a very creative group, but does require much more time and creativity on the part of the moderator.
Nominal Group – Once again discussion here is started with a trigger question. Once the trigger question is posed, everyone gets to state their response in 7 or 8 words (very short sentence) which is then written up on a bulletin board. The moderator, once done, then takes time out to review everyone’s response to ensure that their idea is being clearly conveyed to everyone else in the group. It is important to note that the moderator must lay down the rules that this is NOT a time for lobbying why your idea is the best- simply a time to clairify your statement to make sure that what you have up on the board clearly conveys the message of the original author. Once all the ideas are up on the board- the group can begin to prioritize and vote on the top responses to determine which ideas best address the trigger question and ultimately, the overarching goal for the strategic plan.

Finally, LaDene hit on something that I really liked as far as process is concerned. She has been doing this for a long time- so she knows her stuff and I think her advice here serves as a great case-in-point. She said that it is absolutely imperative that the moderator, right at the start of the meeting, should lay down ground rules for how the discussion will go. Since she is someone who does practice what she preaches, she reminded us that at the start of this course, we were all told what the expectations and rules are for our attendance and participation here at Heartland. Indeed, right at the start she posited to the group that cell phone use would not be permitted, that we were free to come and go as needed, but that class would start and end promptly on time. She also gave us the opportunity to rebuke these ground rules- which none of us did- and then went on to say that since we have all agreed to these rules the expectation would be that we would police each other to make sure we were upholding the norms that we all agreed to establish. Boy what a great lesson! As I mentioned in my last blog article, it’s funny how different experiences here at Hearland all tie together. Later this afternoon we had a presentation by Steve Dust, Greater Cedar Valley Alliance and Tech Works President. I kid you not, right on his front slide he had the following, “Rules of Engagement.” Within the rules he asked that we hold our questions to the end. He was utilizing the very technique that LaDene had just talked about this morning by setting up the terms of his presentation to us all. Great Stuff!

We had a number of presentations today, and for time and energy’s sake, I won’t get into them all. Besides Steve Dust, we had Brien Starner, Blue Springs Economic Development Corp, and Mark Meyer, Mark Meyer Companies, Inc, present. The topics this afternoon all centered around real estate development. With that said however, I took away the most from our field trip excursion to the Haldex plant and our tour of Independence, Missouri (in particular, the Truman Presidential Museum Library).

At Haldex, they manufacture truck breaks. I was very grateful for Don Chaplin’s helpful advice on what to look for once inside the plant: cleanliness, technology-human interaction, location, outside appearance, neighborhood area, workflow/layout, and safety. Having worked in a distribution center before, I had some idea for what to watch for- but this was far beyond simply filling pallets and sorting them. At this plant, employees were being asked to conduct very complex tasks utilizing very expensive technology. First off, the human-technology interaction was absolutely mind blowing. Even though I truly believe manufacturing is in many ways dying here in the mid-west, after touring a facility like Haldex- I seriously have started to question this position. I now think that there may be a future for manufacturing, but that with the advancement of technology- it may not be the economic driver it once was. As way of example, consider that one of the newer machines that Haldex has installed now does the work of what used to take eight people and produces about 30 more units per hour on top of that.

The other technology based thing I noticed at Haldex was their intricate and detailed monitoring of all of their systems. They monitored everything from employee clock in times to noting when an employee accidently tripped and fell. All this information was sent to their plant operators who deconstruct the data and work with managers to improve productivity. At Haldex, they have gone so far as to install tv monitors above each station showing the production goal with the actual production numbers in real-time for all the employees and managers to see.

Finally, our trip to Independence was really interesting. We also went on a tour of the Truman Presidential Museum Library and had dinner at Ophelia’s in Independence. As has been the case with Heartland, the food was outstanding and company superb. I was able to meet a whole table of new faces and talk shop with all of them- fun times! I promised Courtney Schwitzer in our office that I would find the person from Cedar County for her- mission accomplished. Her name is Trisha Gottschalk from Cedar County Economic Development Commission. It was yet another great day of information and of networking. Until tomorrow, sleep tight!

“Your Community’s Best Companies…Are your Competitor’s Best Prospects!”

Rob Williams — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 01:22:00 -3650

As I am quickly learning, strategic economic development has a lot to do with keeping your companies in your region and recruiting outside companies to come join you. This is an area that I have very little expertise or understanding in- at least I didn’t before today. One of the foremost leaders in business retention and expansion, Eric Canada with Blane, Canada Ltd, was here this morning to talk on this topic. Eric really did an outstanding job talking about how to identify and develop your overall business community to really shine. He did not focus on the attraction part per se, but rather helped us all to understand that if we do not know what we have in our own backyards, we are very liable to lose the talent we have.

My favorite take home lesson from the presentation was when Eric showed an aerial view of a town and as a class we deconstructed a building that was visible on the map. We were pushed to look beyond the green trees and the building itself to figure out what was happening with this company’s local economy. It took me back to my urban geography and development classes in college. It was amazing what we could induct from a simple overhead view of this building within the industrial park of this town. As way of example, consider this. The roof appeared to have three different colors with fresh landscaping scars on the surface of the earth surrounding the most white portions. This indicated that the particular building we were looking at, presumably a distribution center (there were truck ports, large parking lot, etc), had recently undergone expansion. Also noticeable was one of the end points of the parking lot was left unfinished- potentially signaling further expansion plans in the near future. Later Eric showed the unassuming front view of the building from the ground and talked about how we as developers would never have known, without inside information, the wild transformations that were taking place within this business. More importantly, he showed that if we didn’t take stock of our best companies, how somewhere there would be a developer who you could bet was watching this and adding this particular company to their marking list. Being in market research myself, I know all too well how true his point was and deeply appreciated the lesson in how to analyze a community from a different vantage point.

Today was jammed packed full of GREAT information- I don’t have the time or the energy to review everything, but I wanted to be sure to hit on a bit about Eric’s presentation and also Mark Grey’s discussion on integrating immigrants into the local economy. In addition there was also Mike Downing who spoke on Economic Development Financing 101 and Bill Thompson who spoke about workforce development. The content in both of those particular presentations I was already familiar with, so I’m going to go ahead and move on to some of the things I learned from Dr. Grey.

Mark Grey is a professor at UNI who studies Sociology/Anthropology and serves as Director for the Iowa Center for Immigrant Leadership and Integration. I almost do not know where to start with his presentation. First it was great to see someone speak about something they are obviously so passionate about (not that the speakers haven’t been passionate about their topics- but with Mark it really came through). It’s funny how sometimes two radically different topics in economic development can merge so seamlessly. Mark’s presentation focused on the changing demographic/psychographics of the state of Iowa and of the Midwest in general. The thread that tied Mark’s presentation with Eric’s was the fact that not only businesses under threat of leaving Iowa- but so are one of our greatest assets- young professionals. One of the stats he shared with us is that more than half of all Iowa’s high school and college graduates are leaving Iowa to go to other states!

Dr. Grey’s presentation was much more than simply population flows- he also talked about the rapid boom of immigration and minority growth in Iowa (while he also spent time discussing the Midwest, I’m going to focus on the Iowa information as it’s more salient to this blog). The one take home message I want to be able to share with all of you back home is that if the trends continue on their current path, by 2030 Iowa’s population will be 10% Latino (many of whom will be young/middle aged) and a full quarter will be aged 65 or older and white. If you are not thinking for the future, now is the time to start. Service Providers need to start thinking about how to reach out to the Latino community and business succession should also be a key component of any economic strategic planning efforts for Iowa’s long term future. It’s not just the Latino community that we as economic developers need to be thinking about- according to all of the statistics that Dr. Grey shared, we need to be cognizant about how we can serve all of our non-native populations in our state (e.g. Russians, Bosnians, Somalis, Sudanese, and Ukrainians). As city planners, county economic developers, and service providers it is incumbent upon us to figure out how the next twenty years are going to play out so that we can provide economic security for everyone within our borders- whether it’s jobs, housing, or urban development/growth (another trend was the proportionate decline of population in our rural areas and drastic growth within our metros). His end message, which I think was well received, was that we need to exercise patience & understanding as we continue to learn and integrate this new workforce into our everyday lives.

Well I’m dead tired from today and have much more reading and digesting to do. With that, I’m going to sign off. I will write another blog at the conclusion of tomorrow with more fun information that I’m learning! For those of you who are interested; I am also tweeting key quotes from presenters on my twitter account. You can follow along with me at @_RobWilliams for the real-time scoop.