Posts Tagged ‘Small Business’

Does Your Business Name Really Matter?

Like all new businesses, when we were coming up with a name for our product, we struggled a bit.  We had to balance the availability of a “.com” domain, making sure the name is protect-able from a trademark perspective, and that the name would actually convey a sense of what we do.  This may be wrong,  but we wanted to focus on a “.com” domain, and one that spelled out our product name (not “who you gonna trust.com”). 

We looked for available domains (because we didn’t want to spend a lot of money on a domain name), and then applied the next level of filter — conveying a sense of what we do.  We looked at a lot of “trust” type names, but none really seemed to work.  Then we focused on “score” and “scoring”.  There were many more options.

Finally we looked at the list in terms of what is the best from a trademark perspective.  If the name is too literal, it can’t be protected (e.g. www.transparencyseal.com”).  It has to be a bit unrelated (e.g. apple computers). 

There is no real surprise if you’re reading this blog that we wound up with KikScore.  But did all this brain damage over a name actually matter?  I mean, most of our traffic comes from other sources — like our partners, twitter or paid search clicks.  In other words, it feels like we could have named the product anything we wanted to and the traffic would come.  But is that really the case?  Maybe becaue of our name, people feel like partnering with us?  Maybe we wouldn’t have any traffic from Twitter if our name was “BreadScore” (though that just gave me a new business idea)?

What are your thoughts?  Does a name, in the beginning, really matter?

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Posts Tagged ‘Small Business’

Video: Sir Richard Branson on Marketing and Business

Here is a very good short 6 minute video of the great entrepreneur, Sir Richard Branson, on marketing and business.  As always he has some great tips and stories that small businesses, entrepreneurs and startups can learn from for our businesses.

Please check it out and let us know your thoughts.

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Posts Tagged ‘Small Business’

A New Entreperneur's Motto: Try to Win Each Day

Marty Schotenheimer giving small businesses and startups inspiration

So as many of you may know, I am from the Cleveland/Akron area and a lifelong Browns fan.  Yes, I am celebrating Sunday’s first victory of the season, but that is another story.  My point is the great former Browns coach Marty Schottenheimer used to tell his team – “Try to win every play.” I believe his thinking was, forget the first half or second half or all 60 minutes of the game.  Break the game of football down to the smallest element and that is each play.  Win each play, and you increase your chances of winning the game.  It really is a good way of looking at the game of football.

The Entrepreneur’s Dilemma: This got me to thinking about the overwhelming odds that most entrepreneurs, startups and small businesses face.  We are up against larger companies, better funded competitors, new products being launched every day and the challenge of just trying to get our names out and keeping our customers happy.  These and the many additional challenges that entrepreneurs face every day can be overwhelming.   They often drown even the strongest and most driven people who take the entrepreneurship plunge.

Just one of these challenges is entrepreneurs, startups and small businesses are faced with being pulled in every direction.   The job of focusing is so difficult (as we discussed previously).  How many of you can not even send an email out or quickly resolve a customer inquiry without being interrupted a hundred times?  We get half way through a three line email and it takes us two hours to get the rest of the email completed and by the time we are done we do not remember what we were responding to in the first place.

A New Approach? So taking Schottenheimer’s football quote, lets try to apply it to our small businesses and startups.  How do you win each play as an entrepreneur?  Here are some tips for us to try:

1) What do you control? Refocus your lens on the issues, tasks, projects and deliverables that are under your control. Forget the rest or at least do not spend a lot of time on items that are outside of your control for your business.

2) What can you attack? Make a daily list of these issues, tasks, projects and deliverables that are under your control and attack them in bite sized pieces.

3) What small steps can I take? The reminder is do not focus on trying to get everything accomplished at one time.  That approach will get you overwhelmed. Instead, take small steps each day and the snowballing effect of this forward motion will eventually help you make progress on your list.

4) What is my daily plan? Take time for an “internal huddle” each morning to plan out your day and what items you want to accomplish for your business.  Even if it is just you taking 5 minutes, it will be worth it.  The alternative is just jumping into the day and letting your emails, telephone calls and employees dictate what you do.  Fight that urge.  The huddle helps you assert some degree of control of your day as Inc Magazine discussed here.

5) How can I give 110%? By concentrating on these smaller steps and items that you control, that should help you really focus your efforts and energy on particular tasks.  That then helps you concentrate your efforts so you can do the best job possible on that task.  This is much better than being distracted and trying to still make progress on these tasks.

6) What is my daily progress? Repeat, repeat and repeat.  And oh yeah, also measure your progress too by giving yourself a scorecard of what you get done.  That way you can track how well you are doing.

Because I am such a huge Browns fan (and I also want us all to succeed at KikScore!), I am going to commit myself to taking these steps to see if I truly can win each day.  I will let you know what progress I make.

Please let us know how you “win each day!”

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Posts Tagged ‘Small Business’

Breaking: Shopster to Kick Butt with KikScore – Helping Small Businesses Demonstrate Trust Online

A few of the founders of KikScore spent much of their formative years within a few miles of Canada! We grew up cheering for Canada’s favorite son Michael J. Fox in Family Ties and jamming to the hard rock sounds of Rush. We even enjoyed a few too many Canadian beers growing up.   So it’s only fitting that KikScore is excited to announce a great new partnership with a Canadian based company and global ecommerce leader.

Our friends at Shopster, the powerful ecommerce platform that has over 100,000 small business merchants, are teaming up with us to help small online businesses. KikScore is proud to launch a fully integrated trust seal offering to all of Shopster’s growing small business customer base.

Here are some facts behind the partnership:

1) Studies have shown small online businesses lose billions each year around the world because shoppers’ trust concerns with buying online;

2) Studies have shown that 63 percent of online shoppers fail to complete a transaction because of concerns about site security or trust;

3) Shoppers are increasingly seeking more information and data from online stores before those shoppers will complete purchases with these small online businesses;

4) Many small businesses have a strong track record of trustworthiness and would significantly benefit if they could show shoppers their history of reliability and stability.

Our partnership gives Shopster’s customers an opportunity to obtain KikScore’s independently verified trust score and seal. The KikScore seal along with the embedded merchant report card empowers small businesses to take their good track record and display it to shoppers and the general public. This will help these small businesses demonstrate trustworthiness and reliability to shoppers who visit their site. Shopster’s customers can then create an environment for website visitors to shop with far greater confidence. This enhanced shopper confidence means more sales for Shopster’s small business customers.

Here are more details on this exciting new partnership between Shopster and KikScore.

Also we want to say a special thanks to everyone both at Shopster, KikScore and our family and friends everywhere that helped support the launch of this fantastic partnership!

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Posts Tagged ‘Small Business’

When Will Mobile Phones Replace Our Credit Cards?

I was reading this article in the Denver Post the other day about how in 3-5 years a majority of consumers will no longer carry credit cards or cash but will instead use their phone to pay for goods.  While I am not so sure that this will be the case in such a short time period I think that consumers in the United States are definitely moving in that direction.

As this article points out, there are already convenience stores in Boulder, Colorado, and Starbucks coffee shops in Seattle that allow their customers to pay by using applications on their smart phone.  Most of the stores that currently allow shoppers to pay by phone do so through the use of a web-based account that the shopper has to pre-register for and “load” money into their account.  These consumers then bring their phone into the store and login to their account on the merchant’s website or through their “app” on their phone that displays an account number or bar code that the merchant can use to deduct the value of the goods purchased from the consumers account.  While this process is definitely a little less time consuming for both the merchant and shopper and no longer requires the shopper to carry a credit card, it really isn’t all that revolutionary to the bricks and mortar world.

Here is a new product from a company called “Square” that does have the potential to change how and where merchants and shoppers interact at a retail location: the Square Card Reader (pictured in this post).

Square is a new smartphone application for the iPhone and most Android-powered phones that allows merchants to sign-up for a free account and receive a free Square Card Reader that easily plugs into the headphone jack on their phone.  Merchants can then use the card reader to swipe a consumer’s credit card for payment or they can also just type in the credit card number into the smart phone application in order to accept payment.  The merchant is charged 2.9%-3.0% of the value of the transaction plus $0.15 for each transaction which is comparable to what other online payment companies, like Paypal, charge.  I think that Square has the ability to change how we define a “merchant” since their product makes it easier for the smallest of companies to compete with the larger players in their industry.

How popular is the Square Card Reader?  Right now Square has a special message on their website when merchant’s sign-up for a new account indicating that it could take weeks to get their reader in the mail because they currently have such a large backlog!

How do you see mobile payment systems changing the way business is done in your store?

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Posts Tagged ‘Small Business’

The Startup Team and Life Changing events

When your team is lean and everyone is wearing multiple hats, it causes quite the glitch in everyday functions when one (or multiple) team member experiences a life changing event. How do you prepare for it? There are some situations that are emergency impact that cannot be prepared for, but others can.

Since the inception of KikScore there have been a mixture of life changing events across the team…
— 3 new births across different team members (all first time parents),
— spousal job changes
— infants becoming toddlers
— loss of pets (and additions)
— demanding day job impacts
— and an upcoming one for me – moving cross-country to ‘the big city’ for an amazing new day job opportunity.

So how does a small night/weekend entrepreneurial company stay focused?

It is very easy for the impacted member to get caught up in the life event and KikScore takes a back seat.  While not the intention, human nature makes us selfish.

We can’t let this happen as the business would in turn suffer.  As a small team, we need to regroup and delegate items out to others  during the transition time, arming the business with communication channels to stick together and react to customer needs.

Some other tips that can prove useful are to continue to conduct weekly meetings to re-establish expectations. The team member going through the transition (me soon) should be able to commit to a once/week discussions to ensure they stay informed and can lend a hand as their life calms down and they rediscover their head.

How has your small business coped with  life changing events?  Please share your story with KikScore.

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Posts Tagged ‘Small Business’

Is a Trained Entrepreneur More Likely to be Successful in Small Business?

When KikScore came to be, the team was comprised of members from a variety of backgrounds and influence.  We banded together and outlined the best approach across our experience to build the business — which is still fluid and we continue to review our progress and make changes, you have to!

We had many say ‘what do you know about starting a business’?  We answered, the practicality of having those lessons learned from previous experience is critical in making a new business a success.  And of course we all have some entrepreneurial zest within us.

There are always those out there thinking that the quick fix money maker opportunity is business for yourself — think again my friend, it takes work, lots of work and perseverance.

It amazes and intrigues me that there are actually college programs geared at entrepreneurship.  Are they really more successful in the long run?    I had a good friend who went into one of these programs a few years ago… unfortunately I’ve lost touch with him, but last I’d heard, he was working for a big business.

Do you know anybody who has taken these classes and has a billion dollar business today?

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Posts Tagged ‘Small Business’

5 Post-Labor Day Steps To Help Your Business Close 2010 Strong

I went to Ohio for Labor Day weekend to visit my family and also be surrounded by Ohio State Buckeye madness (come on you beat Marshall, lets see what happens this week against Miami, Fl!).  The 8 hour trip from DC there and then back again today got me thinking that we now only have a little less than four months left in 2010.  Wow, this year has passed quickly and I got to thinking about my “to do” list for KikScore.  I kept coming back to one thing as we left Ohio and made our way through WV, PA, MD and finally DC – – –  I have to get my rear end in gear!  So here are my thoughts on how I am going to approach the last four months of the year to help our team at KikScore increase our chances of success.  Maybe these steps will help your small business and startup:

1) Revisit 2010 Goals – As the months of 2010 have passed by, we are constantly reminded of what we want to accomplish by the end of the year.  Now is the time to look at those 2010 goals again and take a hard look in the mirror.  Many things have happened in the last few months which may have switched the focus from one goal to another or to a new objective that popped up mid-year. Now is the time to look at your collective goals and objectives and determine what can be accomplished by focus, planning and executing. We did this back after Memorial Day when we discussed checking our goals at that time! Now is the time to eliminate the items that you will not be able to accomplish and really devote the time, energy and effort to goals and objectives that can be accomplished or substantially progressed by December 31, 2010.

2) Outline Concrete Steps to Execute on Your Plan – For each of the key goals you see a path to accomplishing, make sure you have a plan on how you are going to accomplish these items by the end of the year.  Not just a general plan, but outline concrete steps that you can objectively measure your progress on through the coming weeks and months.

3) Get Low Cost Help – So one of the conversation pieces between my wife & I (between trying to soothe 8 month Asha to sleep through the mountains of West Virginia), was how more small businesses and startups should use high school and college interns.  We at KikScore have a few interns and they have been a tremendous help.  One of them even writes for the blog and her post on identity theft and kids’ social security numbers has a KikScore blog record for most Retweets on Twitter!  So when you are looking at your goals and your overall plan to achieve those goals, carve out a few discreet projects that an intern can help you with.  That help will free up your time to focus on other key steps in your implementation plan.  Some great sites to find interns are your local college career planning websites.  You can visit those sites and fill out a job opening for any type of position.  We have received applications from students of University of Maryland, Cornell University and American University!  Interns can really help give you “more hands” around the business.

4) Talk to Your Customers – As we push to meet our 2010 goals and close the year strong for our business, we are making an effort to talk to our customers so they can give us feedback.  Customers can sometimes provide very useful and even unexpected information and insight into what your business should focus on.  Also one idea for your small business or startup is to simply ask the question what do your customers need to help them close the year strong.  You may even get some information that can help you increase your own sales just by asking your customers what else you can do to help them!

5) Measure Team & Business Progress Daily, Weekly & Monthly – Often we all get buried in the daily slog of activities and endless distractions (even more of a risk with NFL season starting & Fantasy Football!).  What results from that is we do not track our progress and then deadlines slip, tasks do not get completed and we end up hearing the ageless excuse – “I am too busy, I don’t have time for that.”  For entrepreneurs and especially operators of small businesses and startups, that excuse can destroy your chances of business success.  The remedy is accountability.  That is accountability to yourself, your team and to the plan that you have developed to complete the goals.  We have discussed the importance of accountability previously in this post about keeping your business focused.  So every day, at the end of each week and month set aside time to review your task list, the overall plan and where you are at for meeting the objectives/goals.   Then make adjustments accordingly to help you execute on your plan.

And always remember the quote of Hal Moore: “There is always one more thing you can do to increase the odds of success.”

Please tell us your thoughts on how you are going to close strong in 2010.

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Posts Tagged ‘Small Business’

Online Business – Necessity Or Luxury?

Is your favorite restaurant or local boutique online?    Would you be more likely to purchase something from the local boutique if you could order the latest chenille scarf from your bedside table?

Website hosting companies such as Shopster have made it very simplistic to create a new website and start selling online in minutes.   Having an online site builds trust between consumer and merchant because it can allow a browse before you buy (or eat).   Yet there are still a great number of local restaurants and shops that are reluctant… why?

With the boom of social media, not having a site could be detrimental to your company’s future success.

There are other ways to be active in the online community without a dedicated ‘full’ website.   Creating a dedicated company blog promotes trust and transparency by sharing your company values, and can be done without a full website.

You may think if you only have one or two items to sell, a website is overkill. Even if it’s just one product (such as this unique product for avid boaters –TuftedTopper), the mass consumer base enjoys the convenience of online purchasing. As a merchant, you need to determine what drives the intrigue in your product base.

You’re here reading this, do you have an online business?

How have you built trust and transparency between yourself and your consumers to create repeat customers?

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Posts Tagged ‘Small Business’

Customer Service 2.0: Is the Phone Number Dead?

First off, you know you’re getting old when you begin a blog post with the phrase “this new generation”…and then comment on how things used to be done.  Of course, you’re probably not that old if you’re writing a blog post in the first place, but my point is, when you start noticing differences, you’re aging is noticeable.

But this new generation has a different view towards customer service.  In my day (ahhh, the 90’s…Nirvana was popular, there were new “Twilight” books, and I had a full head of hair), customer service meant an 800 number.  A big break through was an email address, but you never really relied on getting a message back…so you called customer service to get an answer.

As our customer base at KikScore grows, there is something very noticeably absent — that would be phone calls.  Instead, people are looking at our product videos, sending us emails, asking questions on Twitter.  It’s great in many respects — phone calls are time consuming to process and that costs money.  But the written word and videos often don’t convey specifically the information what a customer is looking to get…so it can either result in a frustrating customer experience or it results in a lot of interaction to get a question answered.

So, I’m getting older and I can roll with the punches and not complain about how things have changed…but I’m not sure if the extinction of the phone number is a good thing.

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