Seeds of Growth - ideas to help small business grow

Stylish Helmets

CoolBusinessIdeas — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 17:00:02 -0700

Trend Hunters: Earlier, Trend Hunter featured customizable helmet covers for scooter helmets. Now, twe’re featuring full motorcycle helmet covers from the same company.

In addition to looking stylish, these covers can protect your helmet from scratches. Now you have a new way to add a hint of cool to your attire.

The helmet covers are sold for about 25 euros.

Customizable Helmet Covers (Part 2) [Trend Hunters]

Get customer feedback, generate referrals, and increase repeat sales for as little as $50 a month. Learn more

How to Tell If Your Boss Is Crazy

Guy Kawasaki — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 15:08:02 -0700

Over at the American Express blog I explain how to tell if your boss is crazy based on the work of Mindsite to DSM-IV-TR bring to the rest of us. If you suspect that you work for a narcissistic, paranoid, obssessive-compulsive, anti-social nut case, click here to learn more. Related resources: "Is Your Boss an Asshole?" and Psychology.alltop.

Get customer feedback, generate referrals, and increase repeat sales for as little as $50 a month. Learn more

The predictable lifecycle of the skeptic (or even better, cynic)

Seth Godin — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 13:12:18 -0700

The Kindle is a lousy idea. No one will read a book that way.

The Kindle is late. Amazon has no clue how to launch a product.

The Kindle is poorly designed. See, we told you.

The Kindle's pricing model hurts book publishers. It will never be adopted by them.

The Kindle is pretty cool. Non-techies like it.

The Kindle is sold out. Amazon doesn't know how to produce a product.

The Kindle is selling far more than anyone ever predicted.

The Kindle will sell millions and we are raising our predictions for Amazon's earnings as a result.

... The Kindle missed our estimates. See?

Customers who feel that you are listening to them are more likely to recommend you to a friend. How do your customers know that you are listening? Learn more

Private banking by shoebox

Springwise — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 12:36:03 -0700

Realizing that many of its wealthy clients lack the time or patience to deal with their personal finances, Amsterdam-based private bank Insinger de Beaufort launched a new service that takes finances back to the basics: a shoebox.

After sitting down with their private banker to discuss financial planning, Insinger's clients are sent a big shoebox by courier every month. They drop anything admin-related into the box: bills to be paid, bank statements, receipts, tax returns, speeding tickets, insurance documents, etc. At the end of the month, Insinger sends a courier to pick up the box, and then processes its contents. Clients are sent a complete overview of actions and transactions within three business days, after which the bank takes care of the entire follow-up process, including paying bills, filing tax returns and processing business expenses.

Every quarter, clients are sent a financial report, detailing spending categories, asset growth, etc, and once a year, they meet with their private banker to evaluate new developments and adjust their financial planning as needed. Sensing a gap in the market, Insinger de Beaufort offers its shoebox service to clients at other banks, too. The concept is of course entirely focused on convenience, saving (valuable) clients the time and hassle of dealing with the minutiae of their personal finances. While other banks provide their high-end clients with similar add-on services, the shoebox approach is undeniably elegant in its no-tech simplicity.

Website: www.insinger.com/shoebox
Contact: shoebox@insinger.com

Spotted by: Roderick Cremers

Customers who feel that you are listening to them are more likely to recommend you to a friend. How do your customers know that you are listening? Learn more

Taste lab restaurant lets customers add flavour to their meals

Springwise — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 12:29:08 -0700

Geschmackslabor, German for Flavour Lab, is a new restaurant located in a former school in Bremerhaven. The 'lab' part of the name doesn't refer to molecular gastronomy or food served in test tubes. Experimentation at the restaurant is all about letting customers add flavour to their meals.

Dishes are served ready-to-eat, but diners are encouraged to enhance them by adding one or more of twenty custom-made seasoning oils that Geschmackslabor has on offer. The seasonings are all based on very pure olive oil, which is infused with flavours ranging from Arabica coffee and rosemary to papaya and coconut. Geschmackslabor's menu suggests which seasonings go well with which dishes, but the whole point is for customers to experiment and find their own delicious combinations. The restaurant supplies plenty of bread for trying out different oils before adding them to food, allowing customers to sample a full range of spicy, sour, salty, sweet and bitter. The oils are also sold separately at EUR 4.90-5.50 for 100 ml.

Adding olive oil to prepared food may not appeal to every consumer, but Geschmackslabor's DIY approach to 'finishing' a dish definitely adds a new level of experience to eating out. It's an adventurous, taste-focused alternative to the usual ketchups and hot sauces, and should appeal to those daring consumers that our sister-site trendwatching.com calls trysumers. If you're in the restaurant biz, this is one to experiment with!

Website: www.geschmackslabor.com
Contact: info@geschmackslabor.com

Spotted by: Susanna Haynie

More happy customers. More repeat sales. More referrals. Learn more

Creating stories that resonate

Seth Godin — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 04:42:06 -0700

Every person in the market has a worldview when it comes to what you're selling. It might be, "I don't care about that," or it might be, "all big companies are evil" or it might be, "I love new stuff."

When your story aligns with my worldview, we have something to discuss. When it doesn't, you're likely to be invisible.

A worldview is a lot like the strings on a piano or the cables in a bridge. When it hits something that is of the same frequency, it resonates. The cause and the effect embrace each other and the story sticks, and spreads.

It's essentially impossible to tell a story to an entire population and have it resonate with all of them. The global warming story, for example, has influenced some people a great deal and been dismissed out of hand by others.

While most marketers spend their time telling stories about themselves, politicians spend a lot of time telling (negative) stories about the competition. It's illuminating, because it makes the resonance idea really clear. [The rest of this post is about politics. It's okay with me if you skip it, feel free to do so if you expect to be offended.]

Here are two stories:

Barack Obama is hopelessly liberal. He will raise our taxes, and he's not a real American. You can't trust him.

and

John McCain is a fake. He will say and do anything to be elected, and he is just four more years of our last mistake.

Choose your story (or the competition's story) wisely, because you have to live with it for a long time, and if it's not authentic, if it doesn't hold up, you're left with nothing. In the case of an election, the effect of your competitor's story on your base is critical. (And vice versa). John Kerry called George Bush dumb, but it didn't matter, because Bush's base didn't care that Kerry thought he was dumb. The people who did care had already decided not to vote for Bush, so the story had no power. Will McCain's base care that he's a fake? Will Obama's base care that he's untested and different?

I think that Obama's base isn't as shaken by that story as McCain's base is by the 'fake' one. The worldview that elected Ronald Reagan is one that admired his authenticity and his ability to stick to his principles. George Bush took advantage of that same worldview in the stories he told about being a strong leader. "Fake" undoes a lot of that.

The reliance on negative stories in politics makes me sick. I think we should be above that. The fact that negative stories have influenced every election of my lifetime, though, means that I'm wrong, we're not above it. If politicians are going to tell negative stories, they might as well pick useful ones.

Start with the truth. Identify the worldview of the people you need to reach. Describe the truth through their worldview. That's your story. When you overreach, you always fail. Not today, but sooner or later, the truth wins out. Negative or positive, the challenge isn't just to tell the truth. It's to tell truth that resonates.

More happy customers. More repeat sales. More referrals. Learn more

Green Materials For Future Technology

CoolBusinessIdeas — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 17:00:06 -0700

Gadgets Reviews: To reduce amount of products in stores that are manufactured of unrecyclable or poorly recyclable materials, a lot of world leading companies look at a farmer’s fields to find an appropriate solution today. And they are not only guided by green tendencies. By using environmentally friendly materials companies can bring down taxes and costs of productions. Five plants that are presented here are essential for the future technology and they can be accessed in any part of the world. Let us see what prospective gadgets will be made of.

1. Guyule: First – it is allergy free and recommended for kids' products or products that contact with human's skin like headphones, wristwatches, medical gloves, etc. Also guayule latex can sustain more tension without strain. Second and the most interesting fact – guayule latex perfectly meets a demand of flexible screens, flexible keyboards and many other similar gadgets.

2. Corn: For the world of modern technologies it can bring fully recyclable plastics made from corn. No products like cell phones, computers or MP3 players come without plastic parts. The problem is that it doesn't get recycled and will stay forever at dumps. Something has to be done with it sooner or later and corn has already flowed into high-tech world as a new material source.

3 Algae: For best use to our cars algae can be an initial product for perfectly flammable high-octane biodiesel, which is cheaper and a lot less harmful to our ozone layer.

4 Cockleburs: Its advantages are: unpretentiousness to materials. It can be made of practically all existing plastics as well as of recycled ones. Velcro, if made properly, can be of extreme durability.

5 Lotus: First one is clothing – clothes that don't need to be taken to laundry when some dirty water or something else is spilled on it. The second domain is after gadgeteer's heart. The "Lotus effect" is taken into account in touchscreen design. Touchscreen that gets dirty easily is another trouble to one's head but with the help of nature we get rid of it.

Environmentally friendly materials for future technologies produced from plants [Gadgets Reviews]

Find your happy customers and put a megaphone in their hand. Learn more

Wine tastings via Twitter

Springwise — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 16:00:14 -0700

A few years ago we wrote about technology-enhanced wine tastings offered by Vinotek and VinoVenue. Now a new Massachusetts-based retailer of off-price wines is taking the technology aspect a step further with wine tastings by Twitter.

Bin Ends, which was started up earlier this year, is now gearing up for its second Twitter Taste Live, which will be held this Thursday—the first one was in July. The project aims to give wine enthusiasts around the globe a chance to join the world's top wine personalities online for tastings via the popular social networking tool Twitter. Users need only set up a free Twitter account and then follow binendswine on the service. In the U.S., they can also order the wines being tasted from Bin Ends three weeks prior to the event, with free shipping across the country (Bin Ends does not ship internationally). Then, equipped with the wines and their Twitter account, users can join the event as it takes place, commenting, asking questions and enjoying back-and-forth interaction with the winemakers in real time. Tastings generally take place the third Thursday of every month at 7 p.m. Eastern U.S. time, and are announced on Twitter, Facebook and Bin Ends' own website.

Besides encouraging sales and trial of newer and lesser-known wines (one might even consider this a mostly paid version of tryvertising!), Bin Ends' tasting program also offers consumers a generous splash of status skills through their interaction with wine experts. It remains to be seen if Bin Ends will track which tastings consumers participate in and use that to help guide future purchase choices, the way Vinotek and VinoVenue do. Either way, though, this is one to watch—and emulate. Vintners, take note!

Website: www.binendswine.com/tastings — www.twittertastelive.com
Contact: www.binendswine.com/contact

Spotted by: RK

If you are not regularly staying in touch with your customers someone else will. How do you stay in touch? Learn more

Chambers of Commerce Less Popular with Small Businesses

Selling to Small Business — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 09:36:02 -0700

Last week’s Warrillow Weekly has the following stunning chart, showing how membership in local Chambers of Commerce is dropping.

Their numbers are based on a survey of over 2,000 small businesses. According to the Warrillow Weekly, which is an email newsletter report:

“There’s no doubt that the US Chamber of Commerce, an affiliation of thousands of local chamber groups, wields a powerful influence over legislative agendas, but they are losing sway as an influencer of small business owners. Among major association types, local chambers are at the bottom in terms of membership rates according to a recent Warrillow study, with only half the engagement of industry associations. They even lag social networking sites, although it is still unclear what role these online communities currently play in business activities.”

The newsletter goes on to include a quote by someone who says Chambers are dying because they are “useless and old.” I would not be quite so harsh in my assessment.

I think something else is at work: the Internet and the “small world effect” has changed the playing field.

I happen to be a member of COSE (Council of Smaller Enterprises), a 17,000-member regional Chamber in Ohio. I’ve been a long-time Board member for NEOSA, their technology arm. I think COSE has done a lot to stay relevant and provide value for business owners. Their educational programs are quite good and they offer an endless variety. They started an online community site and a mastermind group. They offer a variety of valuable benefits, such as health coverage, a workers compensation pool, and so on. And they’ve even lowered their dues. So I hardly consider them useless or out of touch with the times.

The issue is that business owners just don’t rely on Chambers the way they used to. We business owners have so many more choices, because we can get more of what we need through the Internet. It’s all right there at our fingertips.

Consider why you join a Chamber. It’s usually to:

network with other business owners
develop professionally through education programs
get access to health insurance and other benefits
get member discounts on products and services
stay up to date on developments in your local municipality and advocacy

Aside from the last bullet (staying up to date on your local municipality), business owners just have so many more choices today.

Plus, the nature of our small businesses has changed. Speaking as a small business owner, we’re no longer likely to be focused on selling in just one municipality. Many more small businesses are regional, national or even global. So networking within your local town may not do you nearly as much good as it did 20 years ago when your business was more heavily local-centric.

Local discounts may not do you much good, because you’ll be shopping at national chains, online or across broad areas. And so many organizations and companies provide loyalty programs and discounts today. You can even search online to find discounts and coupons.

Part of the challenge for Chambers is that if they solely draw from and support a small city and town, they won’t have the resources to compete with what the Internet has to offer and to compete with other sources of information and resources. Perhaps a way for Chambers to stay relevant, is to merge or band together into regional affiliations or create super-regional Chambers. So much more is possible for a 17,000-member organization, than for a 1,000-member Chamber. For instance, when I consider what COSE has to offer compared with the Chamber in my local town, it’s worlds different. And banding together would better mirror how we run our businesses, covering a wider geographical area in many cases.

Meanwhile, if you are trying to reach large numbers of small businesses, consider the above chart carefully. It’s a good chart.

You work hard to make sure your customers are happy. Don't waste happy customers. How easy is it for your customers to share with their friends? Learn more

Your very own focus group: personal image appraisals tell it like it is

Springwise — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 06:20:11 -0700

Offline and online, consumers are ever more adept at presenting their public image or, as Tom Peters put it, crafting The Brand Called You. While they can carefully control the clothes they wear, the brands they use, the photos they upload to Flickr and the witty repartees they Twitter, it's more difficult to judge whether the image they're trying to project is really what others see.

Friends, family and online pals aren't objective enough, so who can they turn to for an honest image appraisal? German consumers can now upload a few pictures to checkyourimage.com, and have impartial strangers evaluate their appearance, solving dilemmas like: "My wife says I look boring, I think I look professional and modern." "My boss says I come across as cool and distant. I think I look reliable and friendly." "Does my long, red hair look good on me, or would I look better with a short, blond cut?" The website points out that just as brands routinely use focus groups to test a product's image and appeal, anyone can benefit from an honest appraisal by a crowd of strangers.

checkyourimage.com offers a variety of test options. Every month, it offers one free trial question. Users can upload their photo and have 30 people answer a question. This month, it's "Do I look naive?", and next month they can enlist strangers to answer the all-important "Do I look intelligent?" Those willing to pay for the service can choose from a Basic Check (EUR 25 for 50 image testers answering 10 standard questions), an Optimal Check (EUR 49 for 50 testers answering 20 questions that the customer selects from a database), and a Business Check (EUR 490 for 1,000 testers answering questions defined by the customer).

Once the pre-selected number of testers have responded, clients can log on to checkyourimage.com for a full report. To ensure a good mix of ages and well-balanced male/female ratio, the company asks its (German) testers for personal details when they sign up. And since the results are only visible to clients, the appraisals are private and don't turn into "hot or not" contests, which would likely be the case in a more open and transparent set-up. checkyourimage.com is currently German-only, but the concept is ripe for international expansion!

Website: www.checkyourimage.com
Contact: info@checkyourimage.de

Spotted by: Susanna Haynie

The growth of your business will be determined by what your customers say about it. Do you know what they are saying? Learn more

Destroying happiness

Seth Godin — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 04:27:05 -0700

A journalist asked me, Most people have a better standard of living today than Louis XIV did in his day. So why are so many people unhappy?

What you have doesn't make you unhappy. What you want does.

And want is created by us, the marketers.

Marketers trying to grow market share will always work to make their non-customers unhappy.

It's interesting to note that marketers trying to maintain market share have a lot of work to do in reminding us that we're happy.

You work hard to make sure your customers are happy. Don't waste happy customers. How easy is it for your customers to share with their friends? Learn more

BlogWorld Expo Special Discount

Guy Kawasaki — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 23:30:04 -0700

If you're going to BlogWorld Expo, you can get an additional 20% off even the early-bird prices (they expire on August 22nd) by using this special code: "Alltopvip." This conference is in Las Vegas on September 19-21. Click here to register.

The average American consumer discusses brands 56 times a week. Are they discussing yours? Learn more

Luxury Siesta

CoolBusinessIdeas — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 17:00:03 -0700

Springwise: We've featured several companies that appeal to a growing appreciation of the benefits of napping, from a New York sleep salon to napping cocoons at airports. So we were intrigued by news that a hotel in Barcelona—the Hilton Diagonal Mar—has set aside 40 of its 433 rooms this summer for anyone who'd like to take a siesta. For EUR 75, customers get a barbecue lunch and a guest room from 1–5 PM, plus access to the hotel's gym and rooftop pool.

The hotel's napping angle should help recoup some of its fixed costs. And it's definitely a more creative approach to boosting occupancy than simply slashing room rates. One to sleep on.

Barcelona Hilton hotel reserves rooms for a siesta [Springwise]

A disgruntled customer is 5 times more likely to tell their friend than you. On average they'll tell 4 friends. Wouldn't you like to be in the loop? Learn more

Functional food brand for pregnant women

Springwise — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 13:22:03 -0700

A French company has developed a new line of food products for pregnant women. Dubbed Luna, the range consists of eight products made with organic ingredients, all aimed at ensuring women get the nutrients they need for a healthy pregnancy.

Included are honey & sesame biscuits that are rich in iron, calcium, magnesium, phosphorus and fibre; and a herbal infusion that promotes healthy circulation. While the benefits of dietary supplements continue to be contested by those who insist that a well-balanced and varied diet contain all the nutrients people need, nutraceuticals (also known as functional food) are big business.

Surprisingly, we haven't seen other brands target pregnant women with similar product lines, except for nutrition bars. Seems like a smart move by Luna. One to bring to a market near you? You might want to read female fever first, trendwatching.com's briefing on creating products and services for women.

Website: www.lunabio.com
Contact: info@vitagermine.com

Spotted by: Eva Hasson

Customers who feel that you are listening to them are more likely to recommend you to a friend. How do your customers know that you are listening? Learn more

The dead zone of slick

Seth Godin — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 04:01:03 -0700

There was a terrific duo playing live music at the farmer's market the other day. They were well-rehearsed, enthusiastic and really good. Being a patron of the arts, I bought a CD.

I hated it.

I've thought a lot about what turned me off, and I think it's the curve above.

Faced with the excitement of making a CD and all the knobs and dials, they overproduced the record. They went from being two real guys playing authentic music, live and for free, and became a multi-tracked quartet in search of a professional sound. And they ended up in the dead zone. Not enough gloss to be slick, too much to be real.

This happens at restaurants all the time. Give me a handmade huarache and it's fine if it's on a paper plate. Or give me something from Thomas Keller. But I have no patience for the stuff in the dead zone, the items that are too slick to be real, but not slick enough to be a marvel. Who, exactly, wants an industrial tuna sandwich wrapped in plastic wrap?

You can send me a hand-written note (but don't write it in crayon with words spelled wrong) and I'll read it. And you can send me a beautifully typeset Fedex package. But if you send me mass-produced junk with a dot matrix printer, out it goes. The dead zone again.

That's why really well done HTML email works, as does unique, hand-typed text email. It's the banal stuff in the middle that people don't read. And yet, 95% of what I see is precisely in the dead spot of the middle zone.

The Blair Witch Project and Pi both felt authentic. The Matrix was perfectly slick. The new Star Wars cartoon is just dumb.

That's why a personalized letter works better than a generic resume. We crave handmade authenticity and we adore perfectly professional slickness.

More happy customers. More repeat sales. More referrals. Learn more