Strategic Entrepreneur

RIP Texas State Fair 2020 💀☠️☠️ Every year businesses rely upon the State Fair as an anchor to their income. There are even businesses that only operate during the fair and take the rest of the year off! So what is their Plan B? 🤔 There are two ways to approach it. One is something a company can do right now, the other requires planning in advance. The one advantage of the State Fair is the sheer number of people that are visiting it on a daily basis. For a business, they simply have to show up with a highly desired product with ready consumers willing to buy it when they see it. Does that sound familiar? 🤔 You know what else has an environment with lots of people who buy things they desire? Facebook! For many of these businesses, it will be essential if they haven't already to quickly create offers that people will want they can buy online. For example.. let's take corndogs as it's a staple product of the State Fair. Most of the store-bought ones taste like 💩! A quick win would be figuring out a way to either sell kits for people to make them on their own that taste amazing, or sell them ready to cook. This same principle applies to any business, as you have to sell what people already want to buy! Stay tuned for the 2nd part... https://ift.tt/3f3pyHT

Need a little motivation this afternoon? Check out this interview. https://ift.tt/2NDrNW6

Always be innovating. It was something I heard many years ago that I keep at the forefront of my mind. Mostly because it's essential for any business to grow and survive. Look at the number of businesses over the years that stopped innovating and they simply closed up and went out of business. Look at Blockbuster video. There was a day and age they controlled the home video market. Now where are they? The history books! It does matter what industry a business is in , there is always a way to innovate as technology advances, new opportunities will be created as a result. For example, in years past if someone wanted to start a retail store, they would have to find a physical location and make a large capital investment to get it going. Now, the same person can open a store online thru various platforms for a fraction of the cost and reach a much wider audience. In what ways have you seen innovation in your business? https://ift.tt/37cb5pP

Three ways to jumpstart your business in June Across the US businesses are beginning to reopen after being closed for several months. While this is great news, it comes with additional challenges as any type of momentum from being open consistently has been lost. So what can a business do to regain momentum? Here are a couple of ideas: 1. Have a welcome back event: This might sound like a challenge due to social distancing, but it just means the event is held differently. A business might have to spread it out over a day or two or even have people make reservations in advance. The goal here is to get existing customers involved and talking about your business being open again. 2. Hold a contest: Utilize a contest to promote your business being open. There are several tools online like Vyper & UpViral which will allow you to run a contest and utilize social sharing actions to help promote it. By utilizing tools such as these, people are rewarded for social sharing to win prizes involving your business. People have been conditioned to participate in contests for generations, so you can tap into an existing system for people to promote you. 3. Launch a loyalty program with social sharing rewards: Loyalty programs are great for any business to utilize. However, to take it to the next level, incorporating social sharing enhances what is possible with them. By utilizing loyalty programs built on Facebook Messenger’s platform combined with Mobile Wallet technology, users can receive rewards based on their connections joining the rewards program via social sharing. This results in a large number of people becoming familiar with your business while minimizing ad spend. The ideal scenario for a business is to combine all three methods to facilitate growth in today’s marketplace. What strategies are you implementing in your business to regain traction lost due to COVID-19? https://ift.tt/2XQCHN1

Here is a little humor to start your day. https://ift.tt/3c7XBMD

Who is your nemesis? If you look at any successful business or person in the world you will quickly find that there is someone or something that is their nemesis. It might sound strange to have one but think about it for a moment. In sports, you have opponents you are going up against, in business you have competitors within your industry, and in life you have other people wanting to talk to the same person you are interested in. So why is this important? Without motivation to become better than who we are today stagnation sets in! Think about it for a moment. If you were to go to a small town here in the US, you will find the same types of stores & restaurants that have been around for a generation. Compare this to a major metropolitan area where there are a wide variety of restaurants to satisfy any type of craving. When there is no competition, there is little reason to improve! With the recent lockdown slowly being lifted, you can begin to see which companies used the struggle to become stronger and while others simply closed up shop. Whenever there is a struggle, innovation becomes a must! If you were to turn back the clock 20 years ago, Kodak was the dominant player in the camera industry. If you wanted to take a picture, there was a good chance you were using either one of their cameras or one of their film products. Digital images changed everything for them. They didn’t adapt to their new nemesis through innovation. Now where are they? Look at Sears. They were once the dominant player in retail, with a majority of America ordering products from them for the better part of a century! Their nemesis was the internet, but they didn’t innovate to move their loyal catalog customers online. Now look at them! Whenever a nemesis appears in business or life, it is essential that we level up what we are doing, otherwise we will quickly find ourselves out of business. https://ift.tt/2X3PIUd

It's a quiet and peaceful Saturday morning, where most people are still sleeping letting an amazing part of the day pass them by. This is one of my favorite times to be creative as there are hardly any distractions. What do you like doing on Saturday mornings? https://ift.tt/2ypuzua

3 Ways to pivot your business in the new economy As the economy reopens and local businesses are having to implement social distancing to meet requirements, it’s essential to look at ways to offset the reduced headcount that can be within an establishment at any given time. Today I’m going to briefly cover 3 strategies to implement to offset the difference. 1. Leverage Facebook Shop/e-commerce; With a percentage of the population still hesitant to venture out, utilizing e-commerce to sell your products creates new opportunities for businesses. Typically local businesses are only focused on selling to people within a certain geographic area, however, with e-commerce the market can be expanded nationwide depending on the product line up. 2. Create & Launch Loyalty programs: Consumers are more likely to utilize an establishment on a more frequent basis if they are rewarded for their actions. Hence the reason why companies such as Marriott, Southwest, and Starbucks all have them. Loyalty programs can significantly increase the bottom line of a company’s revenue due to repeat customers. 3. Run paid advertisements on social media platforms: I live in an area where there are multiple restaurants that have reopened. Most of them have hung large banners outside saying they are open. But none of them have run a single ad in the local area letting residents know they are open. If you want to reach people, you have to market to them where they are, not with what you think is easiest. For businesses choosing to open their doors right now advertising will be critical to attracting the customers needed to keep their doors open. Who do you know that has a business needing help with advertising? https://ift.tt/36m9Q7a

Which fuels you more in life right now? Certainty or uncertainty? For the vast majority of individuals having a high level of certainty provides comfort, but it comes at a cost! 😵 Lack of growth 😵 Stagnant goals Does this mean that in order to grow you have to throw certainty out the window? No of course not! As there are things you want certainty for in life, ie food, shelter, etc. However, growth happens when you step outside of your comfort zone and embrace the unknown. When we create goals in our lives, they are goals for a reason. We are not always supposed to know how we will achieve them. If we did, how could it be called growth? What are some of the things in life you want to accomplish but you are uncertain as to how to get there? https://ift.tt/2Ybm3tm

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It's Friday! What's a win you are celebrating this week? https://ift.tt/2KzwEGg

You have all that you need to achieve the goals you have in life! https://ift.tt/2VSxd3u

With everything going on, I think multiple people feel like this! https://ift.tt/3avFyiS

I think this sums up some people today! https://ift.tt/2XRV5Xp

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