The Intuit Small Business Blog published How to Win Back a Lost Customer. The simple advice offered by Lee Polevoi is:
- Examine Your Losses
- Take Responsibility
- Make a Special Offer
- Keep in Touch
Tag Archives: Advice
The First Step To Building Your Personal Brand
Forbes published The First Step To Building Your Personal Brand. This is as important for the coach at a gym trying to get more private lessons as it is for the choreographer or music producer trying to get more clients. Forbes’ suggestions:
- Determine Your Emotional Appeal
- Determine Your Description
- Determine Your Function
- Put it All Together
Everything I Need to Know About Startups, I Learned From a Crime Boss
Donald DeSantis published Everything I Need to Know About Startups, I Learned From a Crime Boss on GigaOM, in which he talks about lessons learned via organized crime. Those lessons are:
- Don’t sell rocks when you can sell mountains
- Cut out the middleman
- Don’t shit where you eat
- If it don’t make dollars, it don’t make sense
- Closed mouths don’t get fed
- Be a badass
Termination Dos and Don’ts
Cheer Biz News published Termination Dos and Don’ts. The “Don’ts” include Treating All Cases Equally and Being Disrespectful while the “Do’s” include Being Specific and Keeping a Paper Trail. The article goes into much more detail and is a good read for employers and employees.
8 Lessons for Female Founders from Barbara Corcoran
Barbara Corcoran published 8 Lessons for Female Founders from Barbara Corcoran on Forbes. Although the advice was written for women, much of it applies to anyone starting a company or trying to establish themselves. My personal favorites are:
- Perception Creates Reality
- Shoot the Dogs Early
- There Are Two Kinds of People: Expanders & Containers
So You Want to Start a Business
Jay Goltz published So You Want to Start a Business, reminding everyone that starting a business is hard. He suggests doing your homework, seeking intelligent advice, and confusing support with wisdom.
One more thing: Going into business is risky, treacherous and demanding. But it is also invigorating, rewarding and beautiful, when it works. It is a lot like nature — with violent hurricanes and beautiful sunsets. I am not sure that you choose to be an entrepreneur; it chooses you.
Dealing with Late Accounts
One of the things that seems to be consistent across gyms is accounts being behind, especially this time of year. As an owner you have to keep overdue accounts under control in order to avoid paying for things your athletes are paying for and driving yourself out of business. Control starts with having a policy regarding overdue accounts. It could range from having a policy that prevents anyone that is behind or a certain dollar amount behind from participating to requiring a card on file, but regardless of the option you go with you must apply it consistently. The final part is applying it consistently to everyone. Firmly enforcing the option you choose will let your parents know you are serious about the business side of things and give them faith you’ll be around for the long run.
Letting an athlete get behind puts you in a bad position. If the athlete quits or you throw them off with an overdue account it will pretty much ensure you won’t be collecting what’s due. To mitigate this, the sooner the decision is made for the overdue account to no longer participate the better it is financially. On one hand you are no longer increasing how much you are owed and on the other hand you are no longer helping a family rack up debt they can’t handle. If you let the athlete continue with an overdue account, you are not just giving your service away, you are actually paying someone to take it. If you are paying fees, but haven’t collected the money from the athlete, you are paying everyone else in the industry, uniform companies, event producers, choreographers, music producers, but you haven’t paid yourself. You cannot stay in business this way.
I heard several reasons explaining why some athletes don’t pay. If you choose to allow this please understand the impact of doing so. On the positive side you usually get better athletes and can compete with closer to the maximum number of people allowed, increasing your chances of placing well. On the negative side you can offend the families that are paying, causing them to leave your program. Of course what is done is your choice, just make sure the decisions you are making are helping you accomplish the goals you have set.
Tory Burch to Entrepreneurs: Embrace Change
CNN Money published Tory Burch to Entrepreneurs: Embrace Change. The best part of this article is the list of what small business should do to learn from big business:
- Read interviews with experts in their field, listen to their advice but also have their own focused point of view.
- Look at companies that they admire to learn from their strengths and weaknesses.
- Not underestimate the power of a cold call. Requesting informational meetings is a powerful tool.
Should My Company Be On Facebook?
Over the past couple of years I’ve had several people ask if their company should be on Facebook. If your company is in the Cheerleading and Dance industry the answer is a definite YES. Why? Because your customers, existing and potential, are using Facebook.
Facebook has over 500 million users, which is a great audience to share your business with. The question should be how to use Facebook, not whether or not to use it, and we’ll help address that question at a later date.
Spirit Company News & Blog
Welcome to the Spirit Company Blog. We’re going to use this as our place to give advice and information about what your Gym, Studio, or Event Producer should be doing and what’s going on inside of Spirit Company. This will differ from our sister site Spirit Post, which let’s you know what’s going on in the industry, because you’ll get advice here.