Marketing Communications Blog

Coaching and its merits

Was in my car, driving to a client, (about six hours away), with a friend's friend sitting in the passenger seat.  She was a struggling artist - no, not one that paints, but, one that writes; and she writes plays - musicals.

So, we were talking about what she was working on lately, and of course, I started thinking about how she should market it, get it into the mainstream, become noticed, so that she can get her plays on Broadway (or even off-Broadway).

After she told me how the "business" is done in her field and what it takes to get noticed, I jumped in a completely different direction on how she can get noticed.  For those of you who know me, you know how I think - differently then most people out there. Well, I guess I kind of blew her away with how I would get my plays noticed, because that is all we could talk about the rest of the trip.

After awhile, she said that I should do this for a living - lol - and that I should go and meet with people and help them solve their problems.  Which I informed her that there are people who do that, called Life Coaches; from personal lives to business to financial, there is a "coach" for anyone out there and that it is a growing market for this type of person.

So, I am now going through the delimma of should I start a Life Coaching business.  My sister told me a year ago to start doing this after she observed me at one of her dinner parties helping some friends of hers - which, to me, is not helping, but, just common sense on what to do to be more successful, personally and financially.

Should I or shouldn't I?  To me, this is just basic thinking - to continue to go out with that boyfriend or to grow the business in a new way or to invest in gold or whatever. But, whenever I have a chance to talk to people, we always zero in on what is troublesome in their lives and then I suggest new or better or different ways on how to approach it - without damaging the "self" or doing something morally or ethically wrong.

So, if one day you happen to be surfing the net and see a website with my name on it as a Life Coach, then you will know that I started this business and am pursuing the opportunity to help people become better (at whatever they need to become better at).

Posted by blaine at 07:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

When & if you should quit or continue...

Working with a company that is hurting, as a business, for the past six month (see my previous posts). They have about $1.3M in revenue and have about $3M in debt.

The two owners (who own 60% of the company), discussed the reality of going bankrupt - but, they both spent seven years building the company to where it is today and did not want to take the "easy way out".

We discussed doing an asset sale, which, on paper, is valued at about $5.2M - with assets being two items, IP and inventory.  This is seriously being considered and currently some investors are being pursued to purchase their assets.

But, sadly, even if the assets are sold for $3M, the $3M debt is still sitting on the companies shoulders. Through lawsuits and bad contracts signed by the partners, they are either personally liable or the company (the shell remaining) will have to take the burden. Back to bankruptcy - which, sadly, the partners think that they can "resurrect" the company and get rid of the debt and continue to grow the company.

So, back to the title of this post.  I have decided to leave them.  Six months ago, lawyers and consultants (with much more experience then I) came in and advised the company on what to do to get out of their current situation and put the company back on track.

All the advice was ignored or, more importantly, listened to, but, a decision on that advice delayed until the company was not in a position to act on the information and advice.

In a past posting, I talked about how, if you delay on making a decision, the opportunity that was presented may be lost - and that in most cases, if you wait until 100% of the information is known, the opportunities presented will most likely not be there anymore. 

Because this company delayed, they enabled themselves to be put in an even worse place then they were previously (a creditor is now in a prime position to take over the company), the partners keep making decisions that causes them to lose more and more control of the company (even though you own 50%+ of a company doesn't mean that you control the company if you continue to turn over that control through contracts and poor decisions).

So, I can't work with them anymore as they continue to lose control, continue to make decisions that allow a creditor to take over all of their financials (thus control), direct contact with not only their sales force but their customers, and complete inventory control. Meaning, the owners have done an asset sale without receiving ANYTHING in return. 

Watching the poor decision making and a company being gutted because of sheer desperation (or stupidity), has forced me to run away and keep my reputation, as well as my efforts, intact and respected by a future company that will hire me.

Posted by blaine at 12:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

How to turn around a company?

I'm currently in the South-East helping a company that has revenues of $1M and debt of $3M.

Sadly, and I hate to say it, they, like many other business owners, were entrepreneurs and not businessmen.  They always relied on outside help (from other investors) to get their business growing - and sadly, not only did they trade away all their equity with loans and notes, but, they also were taken advantage of by those same investors.

And again, entrepreneurs do not want to give up their "baby".  How many books and articles are written about that?

So, there are a couple of issues with this company; here are the two biggest:

1) They have a lawsuit against them for $1.1M;

2) They have a contract with a company (that is now under federal investigation) for $1.05M in credit and that the founders signed personal notes saying that they would repay it if their company couldn't.

It is very complicated, but, my priority is to a) get them out of the personal note guarantee so they can sleep at night, b) settle with the credit company for a smaller percentage, and c) hire a lawyer and fight the lawsuit (the previous CEO's of the company just kept delaying on everyting - which is good to not have to pay money, but, it delays the inevitable, and that is the government getting involved to settle the lawsuit.

We have hired a lawyer to fight the lawsuit and are currently having lawyers work on the contracts and personal notes from the creditor. 

I guess my point is this: as an entrepreneur, let your baby go, if dead, bury it, and if alive, bring in a competent professional to run the company. 

I have no doubt that the company can be turned around, if the entrepreneurs let me do my job and everyone face the ugliness that is out there and work out settlement terms.  It will allow the company to continue to operate and, most importanly, be sold.  Of course there is always the option of bankruptcy, but, what entrepreneur wants to admit failure.

Posted by blaine at 09:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Hello all,

It has been a while.  But to update you:

I got married. Had a honemoon.

Am consulting with a wedding consultant, a dance studio, a toy company, and am starting another company to try and sell a concept to the financial institutes.

There are so many business issues going on that I can't list them all here, but, I hope that I can start adding them on a daily/weekly basis to this blog.

Posted by blaine at 12:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Insurance

If you are a small entrepreneur or a small company - you must seriously consider insurance when conducting business.

Recently, I purchased just $1M liability insurance for my current venture. For less then $500.

But, there have been to many times in my life where I have come across a company that didn't "know" any better or just didn't want to spend the money.

In todays America, the lawyers (sadly) rule the majority of how a business "does" business. And one of the first things any business owner knows and addresses is, protect yourself!!!

Recently I worked for a semi-conductor company that never had insurance. Why? Because the chips inside a product were never in direct contact with a consumer, thus, were never and would never be a risk to a consumer (like death, dismemberment, etc.).

When we started to put out the companies first consumer product, the CFO and CEO fought me (us) tooth and nail as to "stupid" reason that we needed to spend money on an item that would not start a fire, or cause a company to lose a billion dollars, or whatever. 

By the way, the product was the USB Flash Drive.

So, I had put together all the packaging, pricing, etc. (and warranty - see the post on that one to see how that turned out), presented it to the CEO, CFO, and board, and then brought up that I wanted $20M in bond insurance.

They said why? We hadn't even started to ship the product yet.

I said, because when we ship that first product (which happened the next week), we needed to be protected from all the frivolous lawsuits that were bound to occur.

Again, they asked why?

I said, specifically to the CFO, who had two young children - "Imagine you are an American who sues over anything - like coffee being too hot; and your child swallows the USB Flash Drive, chokes, and dies. What would you do?"

Within two days, I had insurance for $100M to cover out products.

Don't be shortsighted - yes, it does cost some money, but, protect yourself - don't be argumentative with yourself, your accountant, or business partner - do this.

As the saying is - when you don't do something, will be when you need it.

Posted by blaine at 04:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Starting A New Business

I am going to start a new category regarding my new business venture that I have started.

I may ramble (as usual), and may bounce around (is that new?), but, I hope that I can share some stuff that can help people (and you marketers) to a) not make the same mistake(s) that I do, and b) maybe pick up something (learn) about my actions.

I have started or, I guess, am starting, a business - and surprisingly, in the food industry. I have always loved to cook and am now going to try and pursue that goal.

My consulting business is doing well, as companies still are looking for that edge (that I provide), but, why not pursue something that can bring in some extra money as well as test my business acumen.

I have always had that delimma during a party, the holidays, etc. when I get a dessert - like a pie - and have half a pie left over. Or two 1/2 pies left over, or two 1/2 pies, some cake, some cookies, and other desserts. I came up with the idea of providing personal pan pie (like personal pan pizza's) for people who want to provide singular desserts to their guests.

Last week, we launched the project.

How did we launch it? Well, let me back-track and discuss my history and the philosophy of some of the start-ups that I have worked with - and in fact, I have discussed this in previous entries.

Almost every start-up I ever encountered, worked for, and consulted with, always opened up with, "We have to do advertising - radio" or "TV" or "newspaper", or "web", or whatever. Usually a huge expense that most start-ups don't have the money for.

As usual, they didn't define their market first, and then provide a product for that market (i.e. they went after the "whole" market, where 90% would never buy it until after it was proven).

My partner and I discussed the many ways to market our pies. Thank G*d my partner is a baker and not a business person.

We first sat down and walked through a few steps that I always do when helping a start-up.

1) Who is our market? In this case with my business, it was people who didn't bake, didn't like to bake, couldn't get to the store to purchase a dessert, and/or didn't want a lot of left-overs.

2) How much was our market willing to pay for this product? We already had competition - the typical 9" pie, so, we couldn't charge an extreme amount and remain competitive.

3) What gives us the advantage? With us, it was fresh products, baked within 24 hours, and delivered to the consumers home (all under one charge).

4) What are our operating expenses?

5) What happens if we don't get orders?

6) What happens if we are overwhelmed and can't meet demand? A good problem to have, but, if not prepared for, then, the business can quickly slide downhill.

7) And how are we going to market the product?

I'm sure that I will share more and more of the answers that we came up with as I continue to write to this blog.

But first, I want to discuss #7 - how are we going to market the pies. We knew that we had a huge market (see #1) and we knew that people wanted fresh pies (who doesn't).

We believed that we had the right pricing structure (more on this at some future entry), and we knew that we had limited resources (i.e. money).

We came up with some simple items to market our product. By the way, there was/is one caveat with this start-up - because we didn't know IF we would be successful (we knew that we would for the next two months - during the holidays)  - that we only wanted to deal with cash AND that we didn't want to approach restaurants, yet (see #6).

So, we decided on:

a) a website

b) a brochure

c) a flyer (two different types).

The flyer has been our greatest means for getting the word out (we started this one week ago and already have orders). We approached our friends, places where we do business (like our doctors office), local hospitals (my partner is a nurse practitioner), our gym(s), etc.). Everyone likes to see an underdog win, so, so far, everyone has allowed us to post the flyers. And, by the way, we even do leg work, going block by block and distributing our flyers on peoples doors.

We know that we can make 200 pies a week, and, with any direct mail campaign (this is somewhat similar), if we give out 1000 fliers, we should be able to get 200 pie orders. And so far, we are on target for this.

Of course, we hope that after our first deliveries (starting this week), word-of-mouth (or as a true marketer would call it - gorilla marketing) will help us with the orders.

That's it for this entry. I will update this when I get back in two weeks (right before Thanksgiving) to tell you all where we stand (I have to leave the country for the next two weeks) and my partner is on her own.

Posted by blaine at 09:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)