Consult a Consultant… Ask a Salesperson…

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I once heard that every sales person is also a consultant. I believe this is absolutely true. Whether selling a product or a service, experience in the industry provides valuable information that can used by someone else.

Today in Atlanta I spoke with Margaret H. Baumann. She is very sharp when it comes to plastic market research and building a market penetration strategy. Previously a distributor, she eventually made the switch to consulting and has enjoyed a lot of success in her field.

As we were discussing the different ways she works with clients and the steps she takes, I was impressed by how she emphasized the execution of the marketing and promotional stages. A lot of consultants want to talk high and falutant strategies, but leave up to the lone businesses to execute. A lot of those business need a coach, not just another strategy. There are plenty of great books out there with plenty of great strategies. Good coaches are invaluable.

It seems that good consultants need to help execute the strategy they developed and make sure they have an innate interest to see it successful. I believe this applies whether some one is a standard salesman/woman or a full blown, full-time consultant. Customers feel it. Track records are developed. Legitimacy grows. More people win.

Little Search Engine’s In Big China?

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So I’m in Atlanta, Georgia right now with RigidFlex Plastics International at a trade conference regarding recycled plastics and the developments in the plastic trading industry.

Although completely off the topic of plastics, (I’ll write more about this conference later), it’s been fun lately to learn about the developments of Google and the other search engines in China.

It seems that Chinese Search Engines are showing some gain in their capture of the growing Chinese Market. It’s a tragedy to see that they sell out the top search results to the highest bidders rather than legitimate relevancy, but then, that’s very indicitave of Chinese media culture.

Google is having to adapt to Chinese media culture as well. Censoring their search results is pretty telling in that case. China’s market is growing quickly and google’s competitors (both foreign and native Chinese) are fighting for a piece of the fruit, it will be interesting to see what happens.

What ever happened with Alibaba anyways and their sellout and priorvow to take down google in China?

I hope they call me on a mission… to Madagascar?

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Personally, I believe that some of the greatest meaning in life comes from making the world better than you found it. It doesn’t have to be astronomical or revolutionary. In its most basic form, I think it really boils down to living the golden rule and the rest takes care of itself. Of course, it sounds simple, but we can’t forget the golden rule that the power-holders of the world seem to operate from; that is, “He who has the gold makes the rules…”

I say that because history and present day seems to illustrate that ideas and organizations that have enough capital to be self-sustaining, (that is, financial or human), are the most likely to have a lasting impact. In otherwords, for a non profit organization to really work, they need to understand how money is made and human resources are retained and utilized. Non profit can be an easy way to burn time, money and people’s excitement, if it doesn’t have sustainable financial and human capital resources. Any one who has been involved in a non-profit venture knows the burn-out that comes from undercompensation. We’re not just talking undercompensation of money here–we’re talking units of happiness or units of satisfaction from measurable progress.

I’ve worked with a number of different non-profit groups, including,Catalyst Humanitarian, HELP International, VIDA and others. I spent two years as a co-founder and Director of Organization for the Daxton Wilde Foundation. What an incredible learning experience.

Myself and some close friends are working with a new non-profit start-up, Mission to Madagascar. In association with Mothers Without Borders, they are working to establish a model of self-reliance and residual progress through the Antananarivo Orphanage. If the model proves successful, hundreds of children will be provided with a future they never knew existed, and an existing model will act as a blue-print for future development in other orphanages and social institutions… Kind of exciting :)

Of course there’s a lot going on, but as usual one of the biggest questions remains, “Where’s the money?” We’re working hard to raise money through various concerts, auctions and corporate sponsors–What would we do without those guys?

Postage hikes in the Amazon Jungle

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As we all know, (or should know), postage has increased about 5.4% across the board. This makes sense considering the last postage hike hasn’t been since June of 2002.

Unfortunately for some online retailers, they’ll have to eat that cost while they wait for the consumers or their affiliate partners, (i.e.amazon to catch up.

I have one friend who had heard about the price increase just before she was about to send a letter from her home. After some minor deliberation, she decided to tape on two pennies and let the post office work it out.

Unfortunately for online retailers it may not be so simple. Many people fear that by passing the cost on to their customers they’ll lose business to those people who don’t.

Personally, I don’t think that increasing shipping costs by 5.4 percent will affect the sales–at least as long as the price has a nice marketing ring to it.

I’m curious to see when Amazon will pick it up and offer their sales partners an increased shipping credit. I’m sure they’ll take their time for now. We’ll see…

You’d Better Watch your Assets

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The conference in San Francisco wasn’t quite the organized educational experience I thought it was going to be, but there were some very insightful issues that were brought up. (It was a conference for a Utah-based company called investools that sells investing software and business service packages. The concept of the conference I attended was, (other than making money for investools) asset protection. Protection from Taxes. Protection against death. Protection from litigation. They wrapped it up into a neat little package that could be purchased for about 3K, and supposedly would provide all of the asset protection you would ever need.

The strategy was simple. To protect yourself against litigation, set up a family limited partnership and place all of your valuable assets inside it with yourself as the general partner. To protect against taxes, incorporate yourself and funnel as much of your expenses as possible through a separate C-corp. To protect against death place your family limited partnership inside a living trust.

In theory it seems so simple. What they failed to mention however was that a family limited partnership isn’t bullet proof, funneling everything through a personal c-corp is considered fraud, and somethings inside a family partnership can’t be held within a living trust. Hmmm…

It is important stuff to think about though, and finding a qualified personal finance specialist is absolutely necessary as soon as you have enough money to protect. Here’s a great resource for learning more about family limited partnerships.

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The San Francisco Treat

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I’ll be headed to a wealth building conference in San Francisco this weekend. I can’t lie that a big part of my motivation is an excuse to meet up with some of my good friends while I’m out there.

The conference is on Saturday, Jan. 14th 8am to 5:30 pm in San Francisco. I haven’t heard too many reviews about the conference but the general opinion is that everyone does learn some new things about wealth management, real estate investment, and other personal financial methods. People have also said that the things learned at the conference were not anything that one couldn’t learn online by doing some research.

Honestly, I hope to learn some good things from this conference. I want to learn how trusts work, and maybe some methods to protect the corporate veil, or set up limited partnerships within limited liability corps. Most of all though, the real reason any one should go to these conferences is to meet people. Find people who have similar interests and complimentary talents.

In the end, who knows what will come out of it. Either way, I’m looking forward to Ghirardelli Square and some Rice-A-Roni. I’ll be sure to post any good notes that I pick up while I’m there.

Who really owns the public domain?

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So I recently got my copy of, The Public Domain, a NOLO (do-it-yourself law book). (Thanks Janet.) It’s been a little slower of a read than I had hoped, but it is absolutely fascinating. I had never considered how much money is really available for people who understand how to organize or distribute materials from the public domain. So far the main lesson I’ve got from the book is, s/he who successfully markets the public domain, really owns it :) Granted this includes development, distribution and promotion, but really it seems to be the truth. This book is loaded with valuable case studies and all sorts of useful information. I’m looking forward to some more good reading.

Floating Funds… Fun for who?

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So big corporations withhold money from each of their employees checks for taxes. They find some way to pay the money to government either quarterly or in one lump sum at the end of the year. So what happens with the money while it’s waiting to be paid for the taxes it was drawn for?

Chances are pretty good the money is being re-invested some type of maretable security making 10-12%. I’d imagine that some corporations give a share of it back in the form of a Christmas or performance bonus, or maybe they use it to fund their 401K and other benefit packages. I bet that a lot of places with low paying labor, (Fastfood joints, janitorial companies etc. simply keep it).

I’d be interested to see what really happens to that money.

Cutting outside of the pie.

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Are internet sales a fixed pie? Is there really only a certain amount of dollars that are spent on the internet that somehow need to be divided among the millions of online retailers?

While it may be a hard argument to win, I would suggest that it is possible to get first-time online shoppers to buy from your online store. The growth is small and takes a lot of work, (especially for online sales), but I believe it’s possible.

My dad is pretty anti-internet purchasing, but last year when I started my first online retail company, I simply assured him of the security of the site and let him know that it was the cheapest product on the internet. He bought 4 bottles. Now I know that it’s kinda like he was doing a favor, but the same thing can happen, even if you don’t own the site, but you promote a way for people to invest in the sales of the company. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not screaming to start an MLM or ponzi scheme, I’m just saying integrate some direct sales promotions for your existing customer base can enlarge the pie a little bit. :)

Spam: Enough to lose your appetite.

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So I got blasted with a bunch of spam on my blog over the weekend. How irritating. As I was cleaning it up, I thought to myself, “Why do people spam?” My realist self quickly responded, “Because it must work.”

Spamming is on the rise. Like any growing industry, there must be something to it. Cnet has a great article about spam statistics and trends that pretty much identifies it as a problem that is not going away any time soon.

There is something very tempting about spam, (making it, that is). The old saying, “Any press is good press,” has some merit, even in spam-ridden circumstances. The advertising laboratory at Brigham Young University has compiled some research for one of my companies that sells local music for independent artists. The research they did showed that our website had less than a 5% brand recognition among our target demographic. Their research went on to indicate that over 50% of our target market would look at the website if they even knew it existed and 40% of those said they would buy music if they found music they liked while they were there… Clearly for this company it would be helpful if people just knew we existed.

Regardless of those statistics however, I hate spam.Somethinglocal.com is anti-spam and we are working hard to put together brilliant and legitimate ways to increase our organic traffic and brand recognition.

In the mean time, I’m looking for ways to reduce spam on my blog, but not require a registered login to leave comments. Any suggestions?