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Leaders must increase their capacity to learn amid changing conditions. Take our quiz to find out if you are seeking opportunities to grow. For more insights, see “Leaders: Break Through Your Learning Blockers.”
Instructions: Evaluate each of the following twelve behaviors and rate your experience regarding how consistently you demonstrate.
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3 min read
While celebrity-endorsed spirits have been big business ever since Sean “Diddy” Combs partnered with Ciroc vodka in 2007, George Clooney’s reported $1 billion payday for selling off his Casamigos tequila last year brought the trend to a whole other level. This year alone, Ryan Reynolds bought Aviation gin, Bob Dylan and Metallica both announced brand-new whiskies, and now Conor McGregor is launching, appropriately enough, an Irish whiskey.
It’s called Proper No. Twelve, and the name is derived from the MMA champion’s childhood home. “I come from a suburb called Crumlin, in Dublin 12,” he explains via press release. “It’s a place dear to my heart. It’s where I learned how to fight; it made me who I am today.”
Related: 8 Reasons a Powerful Personal Brand Will Make You Successful
McGregor is the founder, chairman and majority owner of the company.
Image credit: Proper No. Twelve
McGregor took a hands-on approach to developing the liquor, in partnership with the world’s oldest whiskey distillery, Eire Born Spirits. “We created close to one hundred blends,” he explains, “and ultimately selected what we knew was the one and only proper whiskey blend.”
Related: Need a Business Idea? Here are 55.
A blend of golden grain and single malt, Proper No. Twelve is produced in an area known for its rich soil and pure spring water. The company characterizes the taste as “complex and sophisticated yet smooth and approachable with hints of vanilla, honey and toasted wood.” We tasted a sample sent to the Entrepreneur offices, and this description is spot-on.
A supporter of first responders, McGregor has committed to donate $5 for every case sold to local first responder organizations/charities, up to $1 million annually. “First responders all over the world are the unsung heroes who act with courage and answer the call of duty every day for people in need,” he commented.
Related: 6 Critical Steps to Succeeding in an Untapped Industry
Proper No. Twelve will be available in McGregor’s homeland of Ireland and the United States this month.
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2 min read
Companies and organizations are getting their hands on our data and using it for a number of reasons we don’t even know about. Luckily, there are a number of things you can do to minimize your presence online and protect your privacy, without having to ditch the internet.
Related: No One Is Safe From the Data Breach Epidemic (Infographic)
For starters, turn on incognito mode in your web browser. This disables the tracking tools in your browser and prevents websites from collecting your personal information. You can also block third-party cookies — cookies are small pieces of data that enable information about you to be remembered by external sites.
Related: How You Can Protect Your Business From Online Threats
If you’re a social media user, you’ve got a 46 percent higher risk of an account takeover or fraud compared to non-social media users. So it’s important to set specific settings for your posts. For example, on Facebook you can limit access to your future posts to make sure they are only visible to your friends. You should also update your privacy settings to hide your personal information from your pages so random people can’t access things including your email address or phone number. Lastly, make sure to block external apps from accessing your personal data.
Related: 12 Tips to Protect Your Company Website From Hackers
To learn more about hiding your personal information and protecting your data, check out Cashnet USA’s infographic below.
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If you want to get inspired by CEOs of global companies, thought leaders, entertainers and authors, Dreamforce is the place to be.
Staring on September 25 and ending on Sept. 28, the four day event will have over 2,700 sessions for hands-on training and certifications.
Dreamforce is known for providing the latest Salesforce product innovations for users across all industries.
These include insights for companies of all sizes, whether you have five employees or thousands.
The conference is hugely popular, so it is sold out. But you can click the red button to register for a special code to gain access.
Register Now
Dreamforce 2018
September 25, 2018, San Francisco, CA
Every year, the world’s most innovative minds come to Dreamforce to inspire, excite, and motivate attendees. Past speakers include Michelle Obama, Taraji P. Henson, Klaus Schwab, and Susan Wojcicki. With 2,700+ sessions to help every role in every industry succeed, opportunities to get hands-on with the latest product innovations, and thousands of Trailblazers to learn from, Dreamforce is not to be missed. Register now to lock in your spot and blaze your trail to the best Dreamforce ever!
This weekly listing of small business events, contests and awards is provided as a community service by Small Business Trends.
You can see a full list of events, contest and award listings or post your own events by visiting the Small Business Events Calendar.
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Here’s why it’s important to get people chatting about your brand.
2 min read
From social media to banner ads and SEO, there are a number of ways companies market their goods and services. However, the most trusted source is usually from a person’s friends, family or colleague.
Related: Top 3 Ways for Building a Word-of-Mouth Business
When people hear about something from someone they trust, they’ll instinctively trust that recommendation. In fact, word of mouth is so impactful that half of Americans would prefer it over any type of marketing. Eighty-three percent of Americans said they’ve made a word-of-mouth recommendation — 55 percent said they make recommendations at least monthly and 30 percent said they make them weekly.
Related: 5 Ways to Maximize Word-of-Mouth Marketing
Many people assume that social media is the best way to get the word out about a business. But according to research by Talk Triggers, Americans value word of mouth 41 percent more than social media when it comes to recommendations. However, these numbers can vary by industry. Half of Americans rely on word of mouth when it comes to choosing a restaurant. The events industry also heavily relies on word of mouth — when planning a wedding, recommendations from friends is 331 percent more likely to be relied on than advertising. People also depend on word of mouth in politics. During election season, millennials are 115 percent more influenced by word of mouth than by advertising.
Related: How to Get Influencers to Drive Your Word-of-Mouth Marketing
To learn more about the power of word of mouth, check out TalkTriggers.com’s infographic below.
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I attended HubSpot’s INBOUND conference last week, where about 24,000 marketers descended on Boston for four days. It was a far cry from the 200 folks who were at the very first INBOUND a decade ago.
While at the conference I had a chance to spend a few minutes with Jon Dick, HubSpot’s VP of Marketing, and pick his brain on a few of the hot topics currently facing marketers today. Below is an edited transcript of our conversation. To see the full conversation watch the video below, or click on the embedded SoundCloud player.
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Small Business Trends: HubSpot is known for inbound marketing and marketing in general. But recently you added Service Hub. You are the inbound marketing company. Now you’re saying, okay we have customer service too. How challenging is that from your perspective to sell?
Jon Dick: From my point of view, HubSpot is an inbound methodology company. And I think that unsurprisingly over the past 12 years the inbound methodology has just evolved a lot. It started with this inbound marketing thing. But pretty quickly we were like this sales space, something’s fundamentally changing here. And there’s something we have to think differently about.
And now, over the last 12, 24 months we’ve really been looking at the role of the customer and delighting the customer in the entire growth of a company. And we realized that it’s just such a core part to what inbound is. And so, you know if you think about inbound and its most abstract level, it’s about adding value to people.
It’s about adding value before you extract value. And I think what we believe is that the customer’s kind of been ignored in that. And that once someone buys they don’t get a ton more value from you as a company.
And so as a marketer I’ve personally found it a very natural extension.
Small Business Trends: So, being not only an inbound marketing company, you’re a VP of marketing and you deal with customers who are trying to figure a lot of this stuff out.
Jon Dick: Yeah.
Small Business Trends: With change and technological advancements, and best practices, what are some of the things that your customers are needing help with or are challenged by from a marketing perspective today?
Jon Dick: I’ll tell you what HubSpot has needed help with, and the things that my team has been really focused on. And we tend to publish about this stuff, and I think that drives our customer community to adopt a lot of these things.
I think first of all unsurprisingly and as everyone has witnessed, search has just continued to change a lot. And at the core on inbound marketing is the ability to track people through search. And so, we’ve spent a lot of time, and Matt Barby who runs our SEO team has spent a lot of time trying to figure out how you deliver a modern SEO strategy.
We’ve done a lot of testing. We’ve published a lot of content around it. And we’ve actually enabled our software to deliver on it. We call it the pillar content model. And it’s all around topic clusters, and pillar content, and how to really tell Google these days what your company does.
We’ve done a lot to figure out Google snippets. And how to help Google index your articles, and your blog posts for snippets because obviously that reduces your clicks from SERP a significant amount, so you want to get into those snippets. Search is always changing, continues to change. I think keeping up with that is something that our teams invested a lot in.
I think one of the most oft said things in the marketing space is that email is dead. They’ve been saying that for how long?
Small Business Trends: Forever it seems like.
Jon Dick: Probably since 2008 when you came to INBOUND. I don’t think email is dead. My personal observations around email are the following though. Number one, I don’t do a lot of communication with my friends anymore through email. And that has me a little bit worried as a marketer because it means I only communicate with my colleagues and with businesses through email.
And I think your personal indications are kind of a leading indicator of how you communicate in all walks of life. So that has me worried. And so one of the things we did last year was we said we gotta get our email kind of up to speed with how people want to be communicated through email. So we set a goal last year to cut our email volume 50 percent.
Small Business Trends: Wow.
Jon Dick: We just went, and we said we’re cutting volume. We’re going after all these pools that we’ve just been sending all of this email to. And guess what happened? We get more traffic to our website from email and 50 percent of the volume than we did when we were sending higher volume because people weren’t opening our emails anymore.
It just seemed like too much. So now folks are getting an email from us hopefully. You can tell me if this is true or not. Hopefully you’re finding that it’s valuable to you and you’re getting a lot of value from it.
Small Business Trends: Wasn’t that one of the stats that Dharmesh actually popped up about? Either Dharmesh or Brian, that if you send an email, and it’s kind of more of a self serving email that like 85 percent of the people actually think less of your brand?
Jon Dick: Yeah.
Small Business Trends: So in this case less is more.
Jon Dick: Less is literally more for us. I think that’s a common thing. I think getting obviously your chat experience great. Figuring out how to leverage bot automation. It is popular for very important reasons right? If you’re gonna fight so hard to get traffic to your website, create a way for them to engage with you right away.
The model that worked for a really long time was fill out this form, and we will follow up with you and you will follow up with us. And we will go back and forth. And we’ll find a time to talk and meet. And that was fine in a world where people weren’t overwhelmed with emails.
But things get lost now and people have been trained by companies like Netflix, and Lyft, and Amazon, to expect things now. And so, we’ve really done a lot of to embrace what we call just real time connections. The ability to book a meeting right away, the ability to chat right away. And I think that’s an important part of any company’s monetization strategy.
Small Business Trends: Well you mentioned chat bots. So I have to talk a little bit about the voice end of that, talking about voice interfaces. There’s a lot of people who have Alexa, and Amazon Echo devices, Google devices, Siri’s on the phone. Are you starting to see any kind of movement in terms of leveraging voice as an interface into some of the things that you’re doing around marketing?
Jon Dick: I think it’s going to be a very natural part of the evolution of chat bots candidly. I kind of view chat bots as a stepping stone in the path towards voice bots. Some things are always I think going to be done through text. And I think many things are going to be best communicated back to someone through text, or through image if you’re looking at data and stuff like that. I think it’s really hard to just hear a stream of data and make sense of it.
But I think that what we’re learning as marketers with chat bots is we’re learning how to create experiences, and leverage machine learning to actually create really good intuitive experiences that allow people to get to the answer they’re looking for more quickly.
And I think we’re just going to see that people are going to keep asking those questions, but they’re gonna ask them via voice instead of via typing it out themselves. I think we’ll see that. I think we’ll see a lot of companies in this space start launching voice services at some point fairly soon.
Small Business Trends: Do you think that with the Echo Show, who has the screen and Google is coming out with one of theirs, I think the Lenovo that has a screen. Do you think that’s going to impact or accelerate the adoption of voice from a consumer perspective in marketing?
Jon Dick: I think so. I mean again, I think it’s the fusion of information. One of the big things we’ve learned in the past 12 or 18 months is that people want options, they don’t just want to communicate on one channel. Think about your life and the way that you communicate right?
You know if you and I were trying to connect, you might email me on LinkedIn or InMail me on LinkedIn and I’ll be like, okay cool this is good. Can you email me so we can find a time? I’d give you my email, you’d send me an email. And then the day of I’d be like, what’s your mobile so I can text you? Like people just move through channels.
Anytime we think we know exactly what someone wants and try and limit them to that, we almost always have lower conversion rates and lower engagement rates. So when we open up options, on our website where we say, do you want to book a meeting? Do you want to chat? Or you want to call us? We see 50 percent of people book a meeting, 20 percent chat, and 30 percent call us.
Small Business Trends: So it’s all over.
Jon Dick: It’s all over the place. People want options. I think it’s the same thing when it comes to voice and visualization. To imagine that anyone just wants voice is probably not the right answer.
Small Business Trends: Right.
Jon Dick: It’s the same in my opinion with bots and forms. Bots and forms are the same product. It’s the same thing. It’s just an evolution of how you capture information and how you get people to the right content that they want. So I think we’re just going to see all of that kind of merge together. And I think the presence of screen is going to accelerate voice.
Small Business Trends: So there’s so much coming at marketers today. Consumers are smarter, their more tech savvy. And so much coming at them from a content attention span kind of thing.
Jon Dick: Yeah.
Small Business Trends: What do you suggest over the next 6 to 12 months is going to be the biggest challenge that marketers have to get across and get over in order to stay connected with customers over the long haul?
Jon Dick: I think it’s the data challenge more than anything else. I think we all can see and envision what the futures going to be like. And this ability to have this omni channel experience and multiple approaches to how to communicate with people effectively and have all the context.
I think the problem is going to be having all your data underlying it effectively. And I think having great CRM is an awesome first step for that. I think you’re going to see CRM’s evolve a whole bunch in the way that they fundamentally operate and the data underlying them.
I think that’s the biggest challenge. And I think unsurprisingly marketers who are really data savvy and can help envision how that needs to evolve are going to be really successful.
This is part of the One-on-One Interview series with thought leaders. The transcript has been edited for publication. If it’s an audio or video interview, click on the embedded player above, or subscribe via iTunes or via Stitcher.
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The strategies used by Etsy, Mercedes-Benz, JetBlue (and a brand called The Elephant Pants) can give you some good ideas.
6 min read
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
If you thought you’d seen it all with ecommerce content marketing examples, the ones you’re about to see might just leave you in awe — and ready to reconsider your own strategy.
Related: Add These 12 Content Marketing Tools to Your Startup’s Arsenal
You be the judge of that. But the task itself is important because ecommerce businesses are taking the bull by the horns with content; 60 percent of those polled in a Content Marketing Institute study in 2017 said that they would be taking content marketing more seriously going forward.
It would seem, in fact, that B2C (ecommerce) marketers are now becoming more committed to this marketing channel than those in B2B — among whom content marketing has long been popular.
So, here are six remarkable ecommerce content marketing examples you can emulate for your online store:
Content marketing is all about creating free content that your audience loves, with, of course, the end goal of growing your revenue.
Mercedes-Benz’s content marketing efforts showcase how much the brand goes all out to create content for its audience. For instance, the brand has pretty much nothing in common with fashion blogger/influencer Leandra Medine, a.k.a. The Man Repeller, considering that the former sells vehicles. But, for its, audience, Mercedes nevertheless partnered with her and created a video along the lines of A Day in the Life of the Man Repeller.
Image credit: The Man Repeller via YouTube
In this video, The Man Repeller goes about her normal day sharing experiences about her daily routines — something Mercedes Benz’s customers might want to see.
The catch here is that she drives around in a Mercedes, so the company is promoting its brand without making it feel like a full-on commercial. And this isn’t something the car brand does as a one-off marketing effort, as its YouTube channel is dedicated to drawing its audience’s attention by presenting high-quality, interesting content.
Related: How Content Marketing Can Help Your Company Do More For Less
JetBlue is a popular American airline that’s making waves on social media through its impressive content-marketing strategy.
With more than 1.3 million,1.9 million and 290 thousand followers, respectively, on its Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts, JetBlue is undoubtedly doing something right to gather such an impressive following.
Image Credit: JetBlue via Instagram
On its Instagram page, for instance, it engages its target audience — people who love to fly/travel — by posting content that appeals especially to them.
A prime example is JetBlue’s weekly #DestinationFriday post, which typically includes high-quality pictures and videos of destination cities with travel tips from the airline’s crew members, along with an engaging question presented to the airline’s followers.
Etsy is an online market that lets shoppers buy and sell handmade crafts, as well as vintage and unique items. Like the other ecommerce brands mentioned here, Etsy makes content marketing work, using, for example, a Facebook page, Etsy Success, focused on engaging with its seller community.
The online marketplace posts tips on how to run an Etsy shop successfully, shares success stories from other sellers and hosts giveaways.
Image Credit: Etsy via Facebook
Posts like the one above don’t include any sales pitches but provide what Etsy’s target audience members might want to know: what it’s like to be an Etsy seller and how Etsy can help them run an online shop.
The Elephant Pants is an online store that sells fashionable harem pants, among other things. The people behind this ecommerce store pride themselves on the comfort of the pants they sell, but what really drives them is their amazing heart — their passion for saving wild elephants from extinction.
In this context, they’ve tailored their content-marketing strategy to engage and educate customers about their mission in a fun, interactive way — using quizzes, for instance. An example is the “How much like an elephant are you?” quiz.
Image Credit: TheElephant Pants.com
A fun quiz like this drives engagement among Elephant Pants’s target audience — animal/elephant lovers — and keeps them entertained on the website without prompting them to specifically make a purchase. This is what a good content marketing strategy looks like.
Airbnb , without question, has become a household name within a short time, and this success is due partly to its excellent content-marketing strategies.
The brand is famous for providing affordable short-term accommodation, for people on vacation.
Image Credit: Airbnb.com
Because of its niche market, Airbnb prioritizes providing valuable and relevant content through, for instance, its guidebook. This is very unique in the sense that it provides relevant information from locals in different cities — information like the best places to eat, drink or shop.
Airbnb’s ability to consistently produce such valuable content for its target market is what makes it one of the fastest-growing brands in the travel industry.
Popularly known for its sports apparel, Adidas is another big brand taking a unique approach to content marketing by, for instance, taking its marketing to B2B platforms like LinkedIn. Even though LinkedIn is best known for B2B businesses, the professionals on the platform are consumers, so Adidas uses this to engage with its target audience:
Image Credit: Adidas via LinkedIn
The post above is a perfect example; it draws Adidas’s audience’s attention by teaming up with a yoga influencer who is also an Adidas athlete. The post doesn’t prompt users to buy any Adidas products but gives its audience insight into the life of its employees and thus promotes its brand.
It is evident from these examples that content marketing boosts ecommerce revenue; you just need to know what types of content your audience members want and the topics they need education or entertainment on.
You can go as far and as deep as you want, digging out audience data, finding out what content topics and types these customers want and doing whatever it takes to crank out data-driven content they’ll want to see.
Related: 7 Habits of the Most Successful Content Marketers
Remember that stat I mentioned earlier about the ROI from multi-channel marketing? You can generate at least a 38 percent increase in revenue when you use more channels for your marketing. So, the better your content, the more you’ll be able to attract target customers to your store. In fact, your content marketing can get to be so good that you also gain offline customers because they see your content online.
So there you have it: some clever examples you can learn from to take your ecommerce content marketing game to the next level. Did I miss any of your own favorite brands?
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Growth-hacking has allowed a ton of founders and developers to achieve crazy growth.
5 min read
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
Dreaming of turning your tiny SaaS startup into a mega-company with millions of users? Sometimes that goal might seem impossible to attain unless you spend a ton of money and grind away for years. But, take heart: By experimenting a bit with growth hacks, you’ll likely reach goals faster than you ever imagined.
Related: 5 Growth-Hacking Secrets for Your SaaS Business
Growth-hacking has allowed a ton of founders and developers to achieve crazy growth. That’s how you can emulate Airbnb, Hubspot, PayPal and Quora and boost your customer base quickly and effectively.
Take a look “outside the box” at some of these creative, low-cost ways to get your product in front of users. Here are five growth hacks for SaaS businesses.
What do you trust more, an ad or a recommendation from a friend? For the majority of consumers, a recommendation from a friend is more convincing and meaningful. That’s why implementing a referral program for your SaaS business is one of the most effective growth hacks for increasing the number of signups on your platform.
Uber famously handed out $20 for customers who referred their friends to the service. But if you’re a startup and don’t have money to spare, you can offer something else of value like DropBox did. Dropbox saw a tremendous amount of growth by giving away free storage for referring friends.
Not only will implementing a referral program get your SaaS company more signups, but it also encourages your current customers to be more engaged and keeps them coming back to your platform again and again.
Content marketing has always been essential for driving organic traffic but it can also lower your user acquisition cost. Creating educational, engaging content for your target audience is a low-cost way to build brand trust and easily convert readers into customers.
Buffer App came out at a time when there were a ton of other social media tools on the market but they set themselves apart by creating lots of stellar content. Now Buffer App is known as much for its blog as it is for its software.
Remember to optimize your blog posts for buyer keywords. Developing a content marketing strategy that will allow your content to guide consumers through each stage of the buyer’s journey will prove to be a continuous source of leads and conversions for your SaaS company.
Wouldn’t you love it if a top influencer with hundreds of thousands of followers endorsed your SaaS company? That can happen if you join an affiliate marketing site. Affiliate marketing is a great growth hack for your business to grow your customer base and increase brand trust. It’s also low-risk; you only have to pay your affiliate partners when they make a sale for you.
Bluehost has many top bloggers as affiliate partners. For instance, Elna Cain, a popular blogger, writer, and coach, recommends Bluehost to her many readers and offers them an exclusive offer for signing up with the service.
You can join a third-party affiliate site like ShareASale, which is one of the largest affiliate platforms out there with a giant network of affiliate partners. By joining a popular affiliate site, your company will get more exposure and be able to connect with more top affiliates in the SaaS industries. Having an army of online influencers endorsing your business will boost brand awareness and drive high-quality traffic to your site.
Related: How to Market Your SaaS Business
Users who check out your site and leave without purchasing or signing up are probably gone forever and you’ve missed out on the opportunity to convert them. But if you implement a retargeting pixel, you can convince those abandoning visitors to return to your site and buy.
After a user has left your site without taking your desired action, a retargeting pixel will “follow” him or her around the web, on Facebook and Google, and offer targeted ads to gently push this person back to you.
App Annie uses a retargeting ad that offers a free signup to tempt consumers to return to its website and sign up.
Related: 5 Growth-Hacking Secrets for Your SaaS Business
By showing retargeting ads to users who have already expressed interest in your website and company, you have a high chance of changing their minds and turning undecided users into loyal customers.
With so many SaaS products vying for the attention of consumers, you need to offer more in order to entice people to buy. People want to know what they’re going to get before they reach for their wallets so offer a limited-day free trial to users.
Rafflecopter even lets users test drive its giveaway software right on its website; you don’t even need to sign up to play around with the features it offers.
Once users get a taste of what your product can do and how it will help them, it will be easier to turn them into paying customers.
Related: The Definitive Guide for Growth Hacking (Infographic)
Combining your hustle with an effective growth-hacking strategy will bring your SaaS startup big rewards. So, don’t wait any longer; jump-start the success of your SaaS business today by experimenting with these simple growth hacks.
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Hurricane Florence is slogging its way toward the North and South Carolina coastline. But in one community smack in the middle of the cone of uncertainty, small restaurant owners are telling Flo to kiss their grits … or fondue.
As it sits now just off the coast of Wilmington, NC, Florence is a Category 2 hurricane. That’s a dramatic change from Wednesday afternoon, when it was listed as a major Category 4 storm.
However, the downgrade isn’t reducing much of the risk to small businesses in the path of the storm. Flooding and storm surge remain a very dangerous threat to these businesses — threats that could put some companies, sadly, out of business forever.
In a tweet Thursday morning, the National Hurricane Center warned residents in the affected areas not to get a false sense of security now that Flo is a Category 2 storm.
“Do not focus on the wind speed category of #Hurricane #Florence! Life-threatening storm surge flooding, catastrophic flash flooding and prolonged significant river flooding are still expected,” the agency insisted.
Do not focus on the wind speed category of #Hurricane #Florence! Life-threatening storm surge flooding, catastrophic flash flooding and prolonged significant river flooding are still expected. More: https://t.co/tW4KeGdBFb pic.twitter.com/eiD4c8pkRx
— National Hurricane Center (@NHC_Atlantic) September 13, 2018
Experts expect the hurricane to make landfall on Thursday evening or it could stall off the coast but still bombard the area with torrential rain.
At around 6 p.m. Wednesday, the owners of Little Dipper Fondue published this celebratory post to their Facebook following:
“And…. done! Flo sho! Now we can only wish that the penny on the road brings luck to us and those businesses around us!”
In a late-night message to Small Business Trends, owners of Little Dipper Fondue summed up the experience, saying, “It’s been a whirlwind of emotions!”
One of the last businesses open in Wilmington on Wednesday was extra busy. It’s reported that Goody Goody Omelet House kept extra staff on hand the day before Florence was expected to make landfall to satisfy all its customers.
Photo via Shutterstock
Most companies got out early this week. On Tuesday, the Cape Fear Seafood Company restaurant posted this message to Facebook followers:
“Cape Fear Seafood Company will be closing tomorrow Tuesday, September 11th at 8 p.m. in order to give our staff and their families time to prepare for and evacuate the area if necessary with Hurricane Florence approaching.
We wish you all the best through the next several days and hope that everyone remains safe throughout the storm.
We will reopen as soon as it is safe and look forward to serving you all again soon!”
Flaming Amy’s Burrito Barn, which has four locations, including one in Wilmington, NC, posted this message to followers on Facebook Wednesday:
“We will be CLOSED WEDNESDAY, Thursday, and Friday.
Due to Hurricane Flo, we will be closing ALL FOUR LOCATIONS at 2 p.m. Wednesday and will be closed Thursday and Friday. Depending on conditions, we will try to reopen on Saturday, Sept. 15.
BE PREPARED and STAY SAFE, folks!”
Restaurants aren’t the only businesses facing disruptions and a likely drop in clientele with the approach of the storm . The down time is going to hurt a lot of beauty salons wherever Florence makes landfall.
In Wilmington, the owners of The Rockin’ Roller Salon decided to close up shop on Wednesday, too. They expect to be closed until Sept. 18, next Monday.
They let clients know on Facebook they’ll get to their appointments after they return and open for business. But imagine the headaches caused by a week’s worth of appointments needing to be rescheduled — on top of whatever Florence causes.
Even the local Chamber of Commerce pulled up stakes earlier this week as the storm advanced. According to the group’s Facebook page, Wilmington’s chamber closed on Sept. 11 and expects to remain closed the rest of the week.
Check out all these other images from around downtown Wilmington as businesses there prepare for Hurricane Florence:
This small business kept the doors open to customers on Tuesday but boarded up the windows in advance of the storm.
Photo via Shutterstock
Farmin’ locked up tight on Tuesday, a full 48 hours before Florence was ready to strike Wilmington.
Photo via Shutterstock
The On a Roll shop was getting ready to roll out of town on Tuesday as well.
Photo via Shutterstock
This article, “Small Businesses in Wilmington, NC Prepare for Worst of Hurricane Florence” was first published on Small Business Trends
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Also, advice on how to define yourself from Malcolm Gladwell.
7 min read
This article is excerpted from Entrepreneur magazine editor in chief Jason Feifer’s monthly newsletter, The Feifer Five. Each month, he sends out five insights to help you think more entrepreneurially. Subscribe here.
And just as I ponder the meaning of this newsletter, I have some sizable insights for you to ponder as well — about how we as entrepreneurs define ourselves, how we can think big while still zeroing in on the little stuff, and more. The table of contents:
1. How do you define yourself? (Malcolm Gladwell has an answer.)
2. Are you sweating the small stuff? (Just Salad is!)
3. What do you do with rejection? (I hung it on my wall.)
4. How do you react to others’ success? (This reader did it… poorly.)
5. Are you easy to reach? (You should be.)
Let’s get some answers. Here we go!
1. How do you define yourself? (Malcolm Gladwell has an answer.)
Image credit: Bryan Bedder | Getty Images
When you hear the name Malcolm Gladwell, you think of something: a particular kind of writer, or podcaster, or whatever. But Malcolm Gladwell doesn’t. I spoke to him recently, and was inspired by the way he thinks of himself. He aggressively does not define himself. “I think it gets really dangerous — if you’re someone who’s doing something creative — to start to define what you do,” he tells me. “Even if it’s a correct definition, it’s limiting to have that thing in your head. It starts to constrain you.”
Then he expands on that idea a little more:
“I’m open to suggestion. The most important thing is never to make a decision about yourself that limits your options. Self-conceptions are powerfully limiting. In the act of defining yourself, you start to close off opportunities for change, and that strikes me as being a very foolish thing to do if you’re not 85 years old.”
Self-conceptions are powerfully limiting. I’ll be repeating that the rest of my career.
2. Are you sweating the small stuff? (Just Salad is!)
I noticed an interesting change recently at Just Salad, a chain that I often buy lunch from. I asked the CEO to explain it, and his answer is a nice insight into the relentless tinkering that’s requires to run a strong company.
Some quick background: Just Salad offers reusable bowls, which are both eco-friendly and encourage customers to come back more often. (If you opt for a reusable bowl, instead of a disposable one, you get some free salad toppings.) Here’s my bowl, which I got maybe a year ago.
If you squint and look really close, you’ll see Just Salad’s logo. It’s imprinted onto the bowl, almost imperceptibly. But recently, I noticed a design change:
A big, visible Just Salad logo is on each bowl now! I emailed Nick Kenner, the founder and CEO, to ask what’s behind the change. I figured it was more complex than just a little bowl design upgrade. And I was right. Here’s what he wrote back:
“The new reusable bowls that you described hit the stores about a month ago. About six months ago we did a strategic review on how we can make the reusable bowl more prominent in our locations. This involved:
• Better location of where bowls are kept
• More prominent signage in-store
• Better signage on bowl, as you indicated
• Recognition from media and nonprofits on our reusable program
• The EPA actually recognized us in June at a ceremony at their offices as the largest restaurant reusable program in the world!
“All this, as well as general political environment (as the White House turns back on protecting the Earth, others seem to want to try harder to protect it right now), has led to peak bowl sales.”
How great is that? The companies that grow and thrive are the ones that constantly reexamine the details. Make it a prompt for yourself: What little thing have you left alone for too long?
3. What do you do with rejection? (I hung it on my wall.)
Want to see one of my favorite rejections? It’s this:
Recently, people on Twitter were sharing rejections they’d gotten, and it made me think of this old one. It came from an editor at an old job, who wrote these words on a story of mine. He clearly wanted me to feel embarrassed, but know what I did instead?
I hung it on my wall like a trophy. As if to say, I don’t take this guy’s crap seriously. I’m better than he thinks I am.
Rejections are only as powerful as you let them be. We’ve all been rejected. When you are, don’t bury it. Hold it high. Let it fuel you. Let’s keep going.
4. How do you react to others’ success? (This reader did it … poorly.)
We put a sharp, ambitious 13-year-old on the cover of September’s Entrepreneur magazine, and have received an overwhelming number of positive messages about it. But I also got one angry email. I want you to read it, and witness the ugliness of resentment.
Here’s what a man named Mel emailed me: “It’s so heartening to realize that if a ditzy-looking kid can become a millionaire so easily, I must have completely screwed up my life, and despite all of my hard work and efforts, I’ll never be an outlier like that. I’ve tossed the magazine, canceled my subscription, and am now facing reality. Thanks so much.”
Good, Mel. Cancel the subscription. Go do something else with your life, because clearly entrepreneurship is not for you. Entrepreneurship is competitive, of course: We compete against ourselves, our peers and the industry at large. We’re out to prove our doubters wrong. We want to win. But we never win by playing the victim.
I get it — this isn’t always easy. Someone will always be doing better than us. But we cannot not allow ourselves to be consumed by resentment. We cannot sit around saying, “It shoulda been me, not her” — because that, Mel, just means we’re sitting around not helping ourselves. Focus on you, Mel. Celebrate the successes around you, or at least learn from them. Resentfulness will get you nowhere … and nowhere is where I suspect Mel is.
5. Are you easy to reach? (You should be.)
Earlier this month, I was trying to contact a writer I might want to work with and couldn’t find their address. It’s not in their social media. It’s not on their website. It’s nowhere. And this happens more often than it should — not just with writers, but with entrepreneurs, with executives, with lots of people of interest. What are you protecting against? The arrival of a few unwanted emails, at the expense of potential work and partners? Take it from me, a guy whose email address is easy to find and who receives a lot of email: It’s not hard to hit delete on the junk. And it’s awesome to receive the good stuff.
Just recently, I assigned a story to a writer who wasn’t my first choice. Know who was? Someone I spent five minutes trying to find an email address for, and then gave up. Maybe they didn’t want the work! The person I finally did reach was sure happy for the work. (And they did a great job … so it worked out for all.)
Seriously: Go google yourself right now. Does a site with your email address show up high in the rankings? No? Fix that!
That’s it for this month’s The Feifer Five. Enjoy this newsletter? Don’t forget to subscribe!
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