web analytics

Archive for General Business

The Best and Worst of creating your own business and/or being an entrepreneur.

June 23, 2012 Entrepreneurship, General Business No comments

Earlier I was reading an article where this person listed out the best and worst parts of being an entrepreneur. It made me think, as I have been a part of a start up business, I have a few 10 key pointers of the best and worst.

The BEST parts:

  1. You have a say in what goes down (like, policies – rules – hours – etc).
  2. You DO NOT have to clean up someone else’s mess. (Like, if you were a manager going in and cleaning up previous manager’s wrong doings. That sort of thing.)
  3. It’s not a corporate office, so dress and how you act isn’t acted upon with walking on nails around either your customers or other employees.
  4. No one really knows if something doesn’t work (only you and who you hired to work with you). You make it, break it and fix it and then make it work even better.
  5. Working around people who have a passion and possibly what you like to do.
  6. Doing what you like to be doing.
  7. Working with people you like.
  8. Location, being comfortable in office.
  9. Seeing the accomplishments of the store AND personal goals exceeded.
  10. Seeing the result in the end…knowing that we made it and it is successful.

The WORST parts:

  1. When you plan and things don’t go as smoothly as possible.
  2. Throwing yourself fully into the job and having to choose between work more for work or sacrifice personal life.
  3. Not having the time to do everything.
  4. Seeing numbers go down instead of up.
  5. Limited funds (buying more then selling).
  6. When things just don’t work out and you have to take another route. Or, when others change what you’re doing.
  7. Staying focused majority of days and being alarmed when the focus goes off one day.
  8. Interruptions due to less help or something of that nature.
  9. When people return items or comp service. (This is just the whole thing of not satisfying someone in the first place.)
  10. When creativity is a big part of your job and the designs don’t come out as expected, so it takes twice as long to create. Or, when you’re not in the mood to do it but it needs to be done.

This list is straight off the top of my head and I could probably name a whole lot more in each subject, but what do you guys think? If you’re an entrepreneur or small business owner, what are your worst and best parts of the experience?

Do you think that RadioShack could make a come back?

June 22, 2012 Economy, General Business, Retail No comments

I was checking my normal program for reading the every day updated business/marketing/economy news and came across this blog post.

It’s basically saying that if Radio Shack turns its head away from what they’ve become to go back to the roots of their beginning – like selling parts and nothing but parts – then they could turn this whole game around.

I can’t remember the last time I went into a Radio Shack. But, I can tell you the last time I saw one and went back to that same place weeks later only to see they’ve closed up shop.

Radio Shack lost its vibe when it started selling computers and phones and other electronics that Best Buy and Comp USA and several other big box electronic retailers sold. Price was another thing. If I remember correctly, Radio Shack’s prices weren’t right with what it should’ve been or less than what it should’ve been.

The article says that Radio Shack really needs to focus on their main customers which are the hobbyists who need parts.

I don’t really think of parts when I hear Radio Shack, I just see a retailer that’s waaaay past its prime. Unfortunately.

There’s already a ‘good enough’ parts retailer and it’s online; Tiger Direct, New Egg, Amazon… and so on. You can also find cheap things on eBay. The only thing I can think of are the people who don’t believe in ordering stuff online and there’s local places around to find parts.

I don’t know. It’s just like anything else. Looking for the best price for clothes? Go somewhere cheap like the thrift store or store when they’re having sales. Best price for jewelry? Same. Best price for electronics? Look online, look at big box retailers or smaller businesses. Best price for parts or hard to finds? Thrift stores, eBay. Y’know.

It’s just too hard to turn an older ex-well-known company back around to be something in a really, really bad economy that’s trying to recover.

There’s too many places to buy things from, there’s too many places that are the same and not unique at all. It’s devastating to those who built the company but it’s just a factor in retail life.

What do you think?

The reason why analytics are so great for marketing endeavors.

June 10, 2012 General Business, Marketing, Selling No comments

Hello everyone!

This past week at work I was looking at our eBay auctions, trying to break down what all I have left to discover for the store format and… I came across Omniture analytics.

They. Are. Wonderful.

Not only are they REALLY wonderful, but now, I can figure out how I would like to steer the direction of eBay and marketing our products.

It was interesting pulling results from 90 days, 30 days and the previous day – not to mention – what we’ve done since the beginning of our year.

I’m really glad I found this analytics program because analytics are important. Not only do you see what the most popular pages are, but you also get to see the most popular searches, the referring domain and how many people looked at your items or eBay per day/week/month/year.

So, this got me to thinking… how can I use this information to help me market our products?

I had all week to study the paper, so looking closely enough at the top 50 searches and top 50 pages. This was interesting. If the item was sold, I’d mark ‘sold’ – if the item didn’t have a name but a number, I would mark it with a name. I did this for both the since the beginning of the year to the last 30 days.

What I found was that a good portion (probably 1/3) items being searched in the top 50 and top 50 pages were items that we sold. Some items we only had a few of, others were on-going popular items that we’ve sold tons of.

The other items that were searched for in the top 50 either came back disappointing results (like, a broken printer or damaged jewelry box we’re selling) or some expensive addition to the jetski….something that someone would need some time to think about considering the price.

Perhaps we can lower the prices on the printers, jewelry box and other items like that but we aren’t allowed to lower the jetski parts, as we are in with another company on that.

It’s so interesting looking at the analytics. Other than try to fix why everything in the top 50 wasn’t selling, I have tossed around so many other ideas that I could think of to figure out how to fix this and make more sales. It’s just going to take some time to incorporate this into the business marketing plan.

I also looked at days and time of days for our most-visited. Honestly, that couldn’t really be measured because it was all over the place for the last 30 days.

I also figured out that a lot of our unique items show up in Google search higher than a lot of people. This is good. All of this is good news for us. I just need to figure out how I can use this information for good measure.

With this knowledge, it’s time that I figure out where to go from here on analytics and properly marketing our eBay.

What do you guys think?

JCPenney and their ‘no more sales’ tactic.

June 10, 2012 General Business, Retail One comment

Think back to the ages of catalogs in the mail. Which ones did you get? Perhaps out of the few that you received, you got JCPenney, right? Not only that but you also received coupons or at least some sort of newspaper insert to introduce the next sale that was going on — and that, is still going on nowadays.

Now, I’m usually up on all of this kind of thing but had no idea what this retailer was trying to do (only because I live in a box now that I’m really busy).

JCPenney tried taking away all sales by doing ‘best price’ for a month.

Now, could you imagine? Could you imagine if you were the big box retailer who always sent coupons and ads in the paper/mail to advertise sales – and then – it suddenly stopped? Wouldn’t you think the store had packed up and left?

What were they thinking? For a company who relies on that kind of business through mail inserts advertising sales, that was such a stupid move.

Not to mention, the new CEO is from Apple, which holds a much different standard. There are straight up prices, no sales, and only sales when something is needing to be pushed out the door before the new Apple product arrives.

Instead of looking at the big picture, the new CEO decided to step in without really thinking. People rely on sales being advertised so that they can go to the store and get items on sale. With no advertisement, who would be dropping by? Perhaps the few people in the mall who swoops in and back out? As you read in the article linked above, traffic in the store dropped.

I would put JCPenney in the same category as Sears. They have been around probably about the same time, both put out catalogs, both carry some sense of the same brand and so on. Not only on the store front would I compare JCPenney to Sears but I would do some comparing about how they are so close to failing.

What’s so unique about JCPenney and Sears? Not too long ago, I did a write up about how Sears is going down the drain.

Price write up has been something that is being talked about a lot these days. For me, buying clothes is like a dodgeball game, I try to dodge every single high price and don’t buy anything unless it’s ridiculously on sale. For people who work in retail, you know what’s going on – do you want to fall into that hole?

Bottom line: JCPenney is a bit outdated for these days. Now we have all kinds of speciality stores, cheaper places to shop, thrift stores, and better big box stores.

I’m just waiting for JCPenney to close, just like Sears.

What’s your opinion on the new way that JCPenney tried to do things?

I am now officially back writing on PitchmenEnthusiast.com!

March 31, 2012 General Business No comments

Wow. What a long, long road it has been to get back to writing here.

For those who have kept up with this blog, even while I haven’t written here, bless you. Thank you for staying and thank you for reading. I’m going to certainly try to put out excellent articles from now on.

So, the big question of: where have I been?

I have been busy with working with being a part of a start-up company. I can see you nod your head there, yep! You totally understand why I had to abandon this blog. 

So here goes: I have been a part of the (start up) company I am working for since October. When I came to work with my boss, he wasn’t sure if it was going to be a small or big opportunity. It turned out (very quickly) that it was going to be something big. Lots of bits and pieces came together and fell apart then my husband came to work with us at the latter part Nov/Dec. And, it’s been full blast since.

Patience is a HUGE key part in someone revving up their own business from ground up. And, if you know me, I am not the patient one.

It took forever to find a building. Then, once we did, it took forever to set everything up (offices, rooms, construction on the building, trying to figure out the plans, phone system/Internet, shop and so on.)

While writing this, I have to take a step back to look at where we had been at “point a” and what obstacles we have climbed through just to get to this “point “b”.

Not really in any particular order. My thoughts:

1. First thing is first, if you have all opportunities knocking at your door (and on your side) to start up a business from scratch – IT IS SO WORTH DOING!!!!!!!!!!!!! You do NOT have to go in and clean up after someone, you can do it right the first time (if you do things right, that is) and if something doesn’t get done… guess who there is to blame? That’s when you will figure out what kind of worker you truly are.

2. You get to do things YOUR way. Yes, if you go in and partner with someone or several someones then you have to negotiate whatever it is – but still – you get to do things your way and if you don’t have a way you get to make up things as you go. I remember all of the company policies or having to do something “someone else’s way” and most times, they didn’t allow or acknowledge new creative point of views. It was frustrating as I have too much creativity and business-sense to follow someone else’s bad direction.

3. While looking for a retail/office space, you really need to know what all you are looking for in an office. Such as, we knew about how many offices we wanted, that we needed a huge garage area, showers, place for a retail store in the front and so on. My boss looked at several places before we were able to put bets on this one as “the one”. If you aren’t a tiny ounce sure it’s what you want, it’s not. Playing the waiting game isn’t fun for those involved (especially ME, who wanted to move into an office about 3 months ago). When you find the perfect place, you will know it.

4. When you think that you have the perfect employees, you might — but you might not. Be careful how you get the employees and that you do not destroy bridges that you might need later. Also, the perfect ‘pull in’ employee might not work out instantly but you might find the perfect one thereafter.

5. Have a plan. Then another, then be prepared to scratch that and make another plan. No plan you make will go accordingly to… as planned. You will have to rethink your strategy several times due to bubbles in your timeline of when things are supposed to be completed.

There are several pointers I’ve thought to myself about helping build a business and there’s too many to just include in an ‘welcome back’ – don’t want to overwhelm anyone!

We’re still at the beginning and it’s been a very cool and interesting ride so far. When we finally get our business open, I’ll update more along the way.

Now, I can officially say I helped close down a business (Goodys in 2008) and helped open a business this year.

Very cool!

« Older Entries