Archive for the ‘Small Business’ Category

Video: Can You Trust Online Product Reviews?

We have covered in previous posts the issues of online reviews here and the artificial inflation of numeric reviews and online ratings.  The truth is,  we all look at reviews, whether they are for a hotel on Trip Advisor, a take-out place on Yelp or a product review at your favorite online store.  With the proliferation of reviews across many sites and across so many of our online shopping choices, the issue has now become what is a legitimate review and what is a fake?

Here is a good video interview  of Alan Bligh, Executive Director of the Coastal Bend Better Business Bureau in Texas.  He outlines a series of items in this video that are red flags you should look out for when you are reading an online product review.  We highly recommend watching this video as it will help you stay safe when you are shopping online and it gives online shoppers practical security tips to help you avoid being a victim of online fraud.

Some of these red flags include:

1) Reviews that are actually from an employee or even a disgruntled employee;

2) A review written by a competitor;

3) Product reviews with too much technical jargon may be written by an “insider”;

4) Be careful of reviews that sound like an advertisement for a product;

5) The same review or largely the same review (using the same wording) is written many times on a site or  an online store’s site;

6) The review is all positive.  Typically legitimate reviews have positive and some negative (or at least potential improvements) included; and

7) Reviews with a user name that has 3-4 numbers at the end of it are typically auto generated by software or a computer that trolls the internet and automatically places generic reviews on multiple sites.

This is a good list of red flags to look for when you shop online.  Please tell us if you have any red flags or seen any odd comments in product reviews that have raised a red flag with you.

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Archive for the ‘Small Business’ Category

What does Online Trust & Lebron James' Free Agency Have In Common?

I am still frankly in some ways recovering from what I knew was going to happen all along.  Lebron James was going to leave Cleveland. I actually predicted it in this post about lessons small businesses and startups can learn from Lebron James after his flame out in Game 5 of the Celtics/Cavs series earlier this year.

So his departure got me thinking about a few things.  As we all know, his departure was a complete PR spectacle.  But there are some serious lessons learned.  Even strangely  I see some commonalities between how we all viewed Lebron James (especially Cavs fans) and how we decide whether we should trust someone online.

1.   People Change – Cavs fans, and frankly many in the media, thought they knew Lebron. Heck there was probably good reason for the belief, they watched him grow up in my hometown of Akron, watched him get drafted and become a global icon in Cleveland.  Many people thought that they knew Lebron to be “one of us” because he was from Ohio and knew the long frustration of Cleveland sports fans.  Boy were they (we?) wrong. Many people say something changed with Lebron in the last few months, even reporters that have covered Lebron since he was 16 and back in high school. It started with the complete collapse in Game 5 against the Celtics where he looked clueless and uninterested in playing in front of 20,000 crazed fans in a series that they should have won. And it continued to this summer where Lebron blew off the owner of the Cavs not responding to one of the owner’s calls or voicemails.  Wow, did he indeed change and change at that very quickly!

Lesson Learned: You may think you know someone online (and maybe even offline), but you need to be prepared for the unexpected. The only thing you can do to protect yourself is a) get as much information as possible about a person and business and b) always be cautious for the unexpected to happen because it will.  Also the person or business you know one day may be very different a few months or years later.  So always keep your information gathering up to date before you decide to do business online.

2. Do Not Trust Labels, Trust Actions – Lebron repeatedly said so many times he puts a premium on loyalty.  He said he is a loyal guy and that he will always be that kid from Akron.  The fans, media and even his teammates bought into that card.  Heck, I even bought into it.  You have to kind of grow up in Akron to understand it but there generally is a common bond of many people from NE Ohio that ties us together for some of the events, sports nightmares and generally ribbing we have endured.  Again, we were so wrong. You can literally have the word “Loyalty” printed on your chest like Lebron does, but it means ZERO if you do not live up to your word.

Lesson Learned: When you are online, people and businesses will say all sorts of things to get your business. They will say that they guarantee certain things, that you can trust them, that their website is safe.  Make them prove it to you by having them show you their trackrecord of reliability, trustworthiness and success.  Heck, that is what the KikScore seal allows you to do as a small business.

3. Look for Hints of Information to be Wary:  So in some ways I can say myself and the rest of the city of Cleveland/Akron feel blindsided.  But that would be naive.  There were many hints of information and actions, though small and isolated instances, that should have made people wary of what Lebron was going to do.  There was the lack of commitment to the team last year when he had the opportunity to resign, there was his space cadet look and play in game 5 of the Celtics game, there was the lack of engagement with the team after the season and then maybe the most glaring one is when Lebron constantly referred to the fact that he needed to consult “his team” for the decision.  No that would not be his Cavs teammates, that was his marketing team and his bunch of his fellow St. Vincent, St. Mary high school friends and agents. I should have known, I went to Walsh Jesuit the arch rival of St. V’s. We could never trust those guys……but that goes back nearly 20 years now.

Lesson Learned: Transparency is key.  If a person or business is transparent and gives you information about themselves and their actions, first that is a good sign because they are comfortable enough to give you that information.  But more importantly, in order for you to make that online trust decision you need to analyze that information in way that allows you to feel comfortable.  To help, here are 7 items to look for from in stores that sell online to make sure they are legitimate,  5 safe online shopping tips and some help with finding contractors you can trust online.

There probably are many more.  Please let us know which ones you think there are.  I am sure you probably heard that the Cavs owner last night had a nuclear response to Lebron breaking his trust and the city of Cleveland’s trust.  We all should learn a few things from this free agency experience so that we do not end up having to send a letter like that to a person or company you do business with online because you did not take the steps to protect yourself.

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Archive for the ‘Small Business’ Category

Contractor Choices — How Can they build trust online?

Summer sun brings external home improvements.  Usually, these are self-driven so you as a homeowner, can plan, schedule accordingly and select a contractor that suits your needs.  Unless, of course, you live in an HOA driven community that forces such improvements upon you.  Welcome to my world… There is a team of painters going from block to block (I live in an urban rowhome community) painting the exterior of our homes.  The process started with a power wash, then caulking, then they are now covering windows with tarps and then finally painting.  In watching the row across from us, the entire process is very lengthy.

The thing is, I had no option to ‘vote’ on which painting company was selected.  So how do I know I can trust these guys?  I just have to deal with the process set forth and hope for the best.  Now I trust my HOA to an extent, so I can feel somewhat comfortable that the end result will be Ok.

But, an online survey of all homeowners would have been a more ideal approach.  Each homeowner could have reviewed the list and looked at the painting company websites to cast a vote.  Different painting company websites may have had specific trust seals that could have swayed homeowner decisions.  The HOA could then have made a decision based upon feedback and cost and worked from homeowner recommendations.  We are a tight community, and value each others opinions.  But alas, we were not given this opportunity.  Not only would this have been a great exercise for my community, but also would have helped to build trust online for the given painting companies that offered up a bid.

If the company doing the work right now does a stellar job, I may go and post some comments on their website in support of them – so they may benefit positively… or negatively if they do a poor job.  How have you helped a contracting or service provider build trust online?

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Archive for the ‘Small Business’ Category

Pricing in Trust: Baseball Tix and Lessons to be Applied

This week I’m spending time back home in the lovely state of Minnesota.  In addition to spending time at my parents’ lake place, I had the opportunity to visit the Minnesota Twins new baseball park.  Because it is the first year in existence, tickets are hard to come by.  In such situations, you ask yourself a question.  Do I go to StubHub.com or do I buy from a scalper on the street.

Now the benefits from buying from a scalper is that you can be spontaneous, negotiate a bit, and also avoid paying any “service” fees tacked on by StubHub.  So, with these advantages, why did i go with StubHub?  One simply reason: trust. 

A few years back, i thought i scored some great seats, only to learn that my tickets were fake.  So from that point on, I’ve been pretty wary of scalpers — opting for the certainty of getting legit tickets (and paying more for that certainty).  It seems that the same could be said for other businesses.  Competing solely on price is a war of attrition.  But if your service or site provides additional safety or features surrounding trust (or giving greater security that the shopper will get what he thinks he’s paying for), you can command a premium for identical goods. 

I’m sue there were other business lessons to be drawn from my baseball experience, but after 4 beers, this was the most obvious one for me to conclude.

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Archive for the ‘Small Business’ Category

Does it Matter if your Product is Minimally Viable or Maximally Buyable?

I was reading this article by Dharmesh Shah on the OnStartups blog where he indicates that a Minimally Viable Product (MVP) is “a product that has the minimum set of features needed to learn what the market wants” and conversely he defines that Maximally Buyable Product (MBP) as “the set of features needed to capture the maximum potential opportunity in a market.”  Dharmesh then goes on to give 5 features of the Maximally Buyable Product.

I think the interesting point that is made in this article is not with the MBP but instead the Minimally Viable Product (MVP).  How does a company know when they have completed building their MVP?  When is an MVP “finished” enough in order to increase online sales and not result in abandoned carts of potential customers at checkout?  I know that when we were putting our finishing touches on our MVP one year ago for our KikScore trust seal product that it was very difficult for us to know when it was more important to get the product to market and when to add that one last feature that our customers would love.

My point here is that I think that building the MVP is not the most difficult thing most of the time.  Usually the entrepreneurial spirit inside of the people that are involved with MVPs is such that dreaming up and building the MVP is not the difficult part.  The difficult part may sometimes lie in the area of limiting the scope and defining the lines of exactly what the first iteration of the ultimate product is going to look like.  Initially, the MVP may be just a shell of what the founders of the company initially dreamed up but the team needs to decide as a whole when it is close enough to “learn what the market wants.”

How did your company define your MVP and how is your MVP different from your MBP?

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Archive for the ‘Small Business’ Category

Bad Calls at the World Cup: Any Business Lessons From This Pain?

My KikScore partner, Travis, challenged me to find any good that has come from all of the terrible calls made during the World Cup.  Not one to turn down a decent challenge (sorry Raj, but that White Snake challenge was weak at best), I am presenting the business lessons from the referring debacle that is the World Cup:

1.  Any Press is Good Press:  Let’s face it, all the terrible calls (and the video replays of the terrible calls) prove the point that there really is little difference from being famous versus infamous.  Either way the event is well known.  For the first time since 3rd grade, I’ve been paying attention to soccer — and so have a lot of other non-soccer fans.  People unfamiliar with the sport are now watching the games, learning the rules, just so they can talk about the bad calls.  The business lesson here is obvious.  Getting the word out trumps pretty much everything else.

2.  The Best Team Doesn’t Always Win:  England should have trounced the U.S.  The U.S. should have beaten Algeria.  But that’s why you play the games.  And sometimes the best team doesn’t win.  Same goes for products and businesses.  Sometimes the best service becomes a niche player.  And sometimes a third party (a referee, a very litigious individual, or a government) intervenes and makes the decision for the marketplace.  Just like soccer matches, your product has to survive in the real world, which isn’t a completely efficient marketplace of ideas. 

3.  Anger enough people, and The Rules Will Change:  The flip side of my first point is that if the current rules set in place promote incompetence and anger enough people, tradition will be sacrificed and the rules will change in an attempt to prevent a recurrence of the same issue.  So there is no instant replay for FIFA games.  With all the anger about the blown calls, there is now serious talk about creating instant replays.  Same goes for business.  If you creat enough ill-will, the rules will change for your business.  Just ask Goldman Sachs.

Feel free to share any other business lessons learned from this outbreak of bad calls.

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Archive for the ‘Small Business’ Category

Video Tips On How to Run a Startup from Laurel Touby, founder of Mediabistro

This is a great 5 minute video of Laurel Touby, founder of Mediabistro, on tips for startups and running your business:  In case you need some background on Laurel Touby here is a great Inc. Magazine article about her.  In this video, she covers:

1) Hiring and using a Lawyer;

2) The need for contracts;

3) Marketing;

4) Creating buzz;

5) Online and offline activities to sustain buzz about your startup; and

6) Dealing with investors.

Check it out.  It is a good, quick video.  Let us know what you think.

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Archive for the ‘Small Business’ Category

What We Can All Learn From the US Soccer Team's Success in the World Cup

Most of the country is still talking about the US’s last minute victory against Algeria on Wednesday (well except for New York who just cant quit Lebron James).  I have watched a lot of sports in my life – so much that it drives my parents and my wife crazy- but that game may have been one of the most exciting sports moment that I have ever experienced.  Then again the bar is not that high for me since I am a Cleveland sports fan.  I digress.  Wednesday’s match was so big that there are reports that the game set all sorts of internet traffic records and it brought Twitter to its knees right after Landon Donovan knocked in the game winner in the 91st minute of the game.

Now the US team that came into the World Cup was criticized and heavily scrutinized for a number of reasons.  People said that the team had not jelled, there was questions about the leadership potential of key veterans, this was the coach’s first time to the World Cup and parts of the team were huge question marks like the entire defensive unit.  So you can say there were lots of concerns and doubts about this US team.  So what did this team go on to accomplish over the last few weeks:  merely going undefeated in their group play that included the mighty English team, clawing back from dead after being behind from a nearly insurmountable 2-0 deficit to Slovenia, overcoming a terrible blown call that should have given them a monumental and historic victory against Slovenia and then finally winning their group after coming back from yet another blown call against Algeria when they scored in the final minutes of the soccer match of the century (at least for us Americans and our fans!).

The US team has a long way to go as they have just reached the “knock-out round.”  Nevertheless, there are so many lessons learned from this team and the group of US players that are applicable to business, startups and life in general.  These lessons are born out of how the US team played, were coached, executed their game plans and relentlessly played each game.  Here are a few that come to mind.

1) Have a Strategy

2) Make Sure that Strategy is Flexible

3) Put Yourself & Your Team Members in the Right Positions to Succeed

4) When Needed, Substitute in Team Members to Help Drive Change in the Strategy

5) At All Times, Make Sure Your Leaders are in a Position to Create Opportunities

6) When You Get Behind, Be Super Resilient and Do Not Lose Faith

7) Even if You Initially Fail, Keep Trying and Taking Chances (i.e. keep shooting the ball!)

8.  Move On & Keep Pushing Ahead Because Some Calls Do Not Go Your Way

9. Trust in Your Teammates

10. Always Play with the Passion Like Its Your Last Game

11. Even After a Big Win, Get Up & Get Ready for the Next Game

Now on the other side of the spectrum of the US soccer team is our friends in France.  Their World Cup was a widely publicized disaster.  The French team literally did the opposite of everything on the above list and were the antithesis of the US team in that they had serious infighting, their coach and players got into fights, they played with no energy and were a bunch of selfish malcontents that went out of the tournament in grand fashion with loss to the much lower rated host country South Africa.  Their follies could be the subject of an entirely separate post on more lessons learned, but I point out the French team’s approach just to draw the contrast of what is also possible on the other side of the pitch.

So as you watch the rest of the World Cup (and especially tomorrow for the US v Ghana match)- see what other lessons you learn.  Now that the “knock out” stage has started, the stakes will be higher and I am sure we will be able to learn a few things about leadership, strategy and team execution when teams, players and coaches are under far greater pressure than the first round games.

Please tell us what did you learn from the first round games?

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Archive for the ‘Small Business’ Category

Is a Start Up the Same as Gambling? I Hope Not

This week I’m in the city of New Orleans for a conference.  I’ve never been before and it has been eye-opening.  As with anything, there are pluses and minuses.  The minuses — the weather and 3 inch long cockroaches.  In fact I just left a fancy dinner, barely eating my food because one NO’s finest cockroaches scurried across my table. 

The upside to N.O.?  First, if I lived here, I would lose a lot of weight — as I don’t eat sea food.  The second: they have a great casino dowtown.  Last night I played blackjack for 2 hours, and I was thinking about joining a poker game. 

You often hear that starting a new business is a gamble.  Well I certainly hope that’s not the case.  I get the point that starting a business involves risk, but risk doesn’t equate to risk for me (so long as it’s a calculate risk).  Last night, as I was playing cards, it seemed pretty clear that most of what was happening was pure chance — no strategy.  I mean, you could have a betting strategy, but if you followed it perfectly, it still gets you to a coin-flip chance of winning. 

I don’t envision the same type of discipline (or lack thereof) with starting a small business.  Sure, you still may go bust, but that doesn’t mean strategy was essentially pointless.  With a business, a good team and idea should get you a better than toss-up chance to succeed.  Whether you recognize if you have a good team or idea is another story.  By the way, I lost $100 last night…so I hope I’m a better business person than gambler.

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Archive for the ‘Small Business’ Category

Don't quit on me!

When starting a small business, everyone wears multiple hats and jumps in to assist where needed.  As your business grows, you work to hire people to fill specific roles so that:

1) the founders can focus on more strategic direction

2) to drive the business forward

3) effectively execute on key initiatives.

You proudly get your entire team staffed up and people are working hard in their roles and the business grows exponentially – everything is on the up and up, customers are fascinated with your product line and you have a backlog of requests to implement… and then, somebody quits.

So this perfect (well at least manageable) entourage you have created to implement your product roadmap now comes to a screeching halt, or at least imposes a very large mountain to navigate around. To keep business moving, you must revert back to wearing multiple hats, which in turn impacts growth and forces you to re-prioritize efforts, at least until you can back fill.

In larger companies, the back fill process can be lengthy and daunting.  What tends to happen is until the position is refilled, the tasks of the resigning employee are dumped on other employees… it becomes a juggling process to continue forward momentum.

While you cannot 100% prohibit turnover from happening, you can implement processes to ensure smooth transition in the event and also back fill (or redistribute effectively) so that you don’t end up pushing further resources out the door from overload.  People leave for a variety of reasons, but when building a team for a small business and growing your company, retention can be critical.  Then again, sometimes, that resignation is music to your ears…

How do you motivate your team to stand by you? What transition plans do you have in place in the event of a mutiny?

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