Tag Archives: executive coaching

Standing Room Only & Hot Fudge Sundaes at CBI Pitch Night!

Posted on by

Pitchers

Pictured left to right: Holly Hanson (Director Cumberland Business Incubator), Kimberly Williams (Spa Escapes), Ben Ford (Dendrophilia Landscapes), Cathy Kimmerly (OH Fudge!), Stuart Sitton (Select Auto Sales), Allison Crawford (Momentum Behavior Analysis), Jody Franks (Franksarousa Farms), and Facilitator Diane Morey (A to Z Printing)

Congratulations to the entrepreneurs who made their Pitch to the standing-room-only assembled crowd at the Cumberland Business Incubator (CBI) on Monday May 4th. Seven business owners worked on their business concepts for nine weeks utilizing a business model canvas approach called CO.STARTERS in preparation for Pitch Night. Five of the entrepreneurs were intent on growing existing businesses while two were developing brand new businesses. Continue reading →

Find the Gap – Part 2

Posted on by

spanx-logo

Architects: What makes a creator an architect? These creators identify openings and as blank-sheet-of-paper builders, they construct solutions from the bottom up. They have the unique ability to see vacancies and envision how separate parts can fit together to form new logical designs. Continue reading →

Can You Dominate a Niche with Your Business?

Posted on by

niche-market

The overall theme of the Peter Thiel book, Zero to One is a study of what successful innovation looks like, primarily in tech start-ups. One of the main concepts in the book is that most of the really successful businesses have started by dominating a very specific and limited niche market.

Examples: Continue reading →

Before You Spend One More Dollar on Marketing

Posted on by

dtmlogo

I attended a webinar yesterday where the presenter spoke my language! It was with John Jantsch of Duct Tape Marketing.   Here are three questions that we should all be asking before we spend money on marketing. Once you are clear on your responses to these questions, your marketing strategy will be much more effective.

1. Why do we do what we do? Continue reading →

Leadership – Starbucks Style

Posted on by

The-Starbucks-Experience_Joseph-A-Michelli-198x300

I’m enjoying learning from The Starbucks Experience by Joseph A Michelli.

Starbucks has found a way to move from one small store in Seattle Washington to over 11,000 stores worldwide with 5 new stores opening every day and annual sales topping $600 million. Can we learn a thing or two about management and leadership from them? I think so! Starbucks has 5 principles that set it apart. The first one is:

Principle 1: Make It Your Own Continue reading →

Guerrilla Marketing – 5 Unorthodox Ways to Market Your Brand

Posted on by

Before a million pails of cold water brought amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) global attention, many people had never heard of the disease. After a summer of ice bucket challenges, the devastating motor neuron disorder has an astonishing level of awareness. Although the campaign didn’t originate as a deliberate marketing strategy, it’s a great case of the power of guerrilla marketing in the social-media age.

Inexpensive, small scale and non-traditional marketing tactics can be extremely effective ways to promoting your brand if the idea catches the public imagination and goes viral. Guerrilla marketing covers a huge variety of activities. Continue reading →

Guerrilla Marketing – 5 Basics

Posted on by

roaches-undercover-marketing-02

No matter where we live we’ve all been in a traffic jam or at a light that just won’t change in our favor and glanced at the advertising billboards around us.

This “wait marketing” that capitalizes on immobility, or forced attention, maximizes potential exposure for businesses. However, unless the motorist has some special connection to the advertiser, the odds are that he or she will forget about the ad as soon as the traffic starts moving again. Continue reading →

So You Want to Start a Business or Buy an Existing One?

Posted on by

start business

We have a number of people who come to the CBI for help in buying a business or to start their own business. Sometimes it’s a short conversation when they come looking for the grant money they believe we have. We don’t have grant funds or grant applications to buy a business or start a business. We don’t have access to a pool of investors who loan money without a sound business plan, or know of any that will loan 100% of the cost of a business even with a great plan. Continue reading →

What’s Your Fair Share?

Posted on by

This October’s issue of INC. magazine has an interesting article about splitting founder’s equity.

15 years ago Atlanta-based Ockham Technologies had three founders. One founder had part of the original idea and was putting in sweat equity and cash. A second founder was putting in sweat equity and cash but wasn’t part of the original idea. A third founder was part of the idea and put in cash but no sweat equity. What type of split of the equity would have been “fair?” Continue reading →

Big Small Business

Posted on by

Small-Vs-Big-Businesses

You are in a group called “big, small business” if you employ at least five people (other than yourself), do over $500,000 per year in annual sales, and have been in business for at least two years. That’s the smallest of the “big, small businesses”. The “large, small businesses” employ 15 or more people (all the way to 500), with annual sales between $2 million and $25 million. That’s a huge range, but according to the Small Business Administration anything under 500 employees is a small business. Continue reading →