Time period 5/1/2011 - 10/31/2012

169, 013 units sold

I should also point out that we maintained an almost spotless seller record on Amazon - 97% or better feedback and rated Excellent by them, which is very tough to achieve.

Still awake?  Here comes the good part.

So, I woke up on a Monday in late October of 2012 with an email from Amazon that informed me that Amazon was permanently closing my account because “they suspected we had sold a counterfeit item.”  The action was permanent. The end.  Have a nice life.

Wha???

Amazon allows you to appeal the decision via email one time, and so I did.  I pointed out all the logical arguments:  a) hey Amazon, what item are you talking about? Can we see it so I can agree or disagree?  b) in the last 17 months we have sold 169,013 items and have NEVER had a complaint for counterfeit, which is because we literally examine each and every item we receive before we send it back out for sale and since we have been inspecting dvd’s for over 10 years, we are experts at detecting counterfeit.  c) did I mention we are rated Excellent by Amazon with a 97% feedback rating?

Within 48 hours, Amazon wrote back to say that my appeal has been denied.  The end.  Have a nice life.  I wrote all of my Amazon contacts.  No response.

So, just like that, my second  business had been wiped out.

Hold the phone - there’s a lot more. Go get some more coffee

Well, I can’t really have a nice life just yet.  Know why?  Because I have 55,000 items stored at Amazon’s FBA warehouses, and now they are all just sitting there incurring storage fees.  Amazon will happily either return my items to me or destroy them for me.  For .50 a unit + shipping or for .15 a unit, respectively.

We’re entrepreneurs - let’s do math!

55,000 x .50 = $27,500 + shipping to return my items

55,000 x .15 = $8,250 to destroy all of my items

Amount of money I have after the spectacular failure of Inflatable Madness a few years earlier =  $0.00.

I try to explain my dilemma to Amazon via their email case system, and it goes something like this (cue the Benny Hill music):

Me: Amazon has permanently closed my account. I have a large volume of items in the FBA program. I cannot afford either the .15 disposal or the .50 return fee. I would like to have my items returned to me. How can Amazon help me accomplish this?

Amazon: Greetings,

I apologize for the current situation you are facing.

Unfortunately, there is no other way other than place a removal order or disposal order which will be charged of the amount you have already mentioned in your email.

We will not be able to exempt the removal or disposal fees in this case.

Please write back to us with your confirmation so we can go ahead with further processes for placing a removal or disposal order for your existing items in our fulfillment center

We look forward to hearing from you soon,

Me: I’m not sure you understood my original email. Amazon has turned off my account and cut off all of my income. I cannot afford either the .15 disposal fee or the .50 return fee. I feel that Amazon should waive the return fee and give me back my inventory.

Amazon: Greetings,

I deeply apologize and I completely understand your situation.

Please know that we will not be able to waive out the removal or the disposal fees as Sellers are not exempted of this fee. Therefore I kindly request you to create a removal order for the units present in the Fulfillment Center.

Sooo,  there’s that.

Here’s where we start to go down the rabbit hole.

A few weeks later, I receive a phone call from another seller of dvd’s and music.  Not just another seller - really they are the second largest 3rd party FBA seller of media on Amazon. They are huge. 10 times my size or more. He tells me that they have been kicked off of Amazon as well for “potentially selling a counterfeit item”.  They had to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to get their product back out of Amazon’s FBA program and their overall business has taken a serious hit.

He then very casually asks me how I was handling the lawsuit against me.

Exsqueeze me? Baking powder?

I tell him I have no clue what he’s talking about, and he points me to a legal website that states that I have been sued by a major DVD manufacturer/distributor for selling counterfeit.

Um, huhhhh?

This was at the end of October.  I did not receive a single piece of paper about the case until mid-December.  Sure enough, I was being sued for selling a counterfeit item on Amazon.  I call up some attorneys and am told that my legal fees would be $25k or more to defend myself.  I faint. Then I wake up and faint again.  If I don’t have the money to destroy my items, I sure don’t have the money to defend myself.

I write to the attorney for the rights holder and explain that they’ve got the wrong guy and tell them all the reasons and statistics and track record of my company, and ask them to drop the case.

They don’t, and the case progresses through the courts while I helplessly watch.

The attorneys wait until the case passes a point of no return to actually send me the evidence they have against me.  It’s a packet with photocopies of the Amazon receipt showing they bought the item from my user id on Amazon, the package they received, and the item in question, which turned out to be a brand new and sealed boxset from the TV show The Mentalist (or as my mother-in-law calls it, The Medalist).

As you might expect, I cannot tell anything from these copies. The copies are in black and white and I can not find anything wrong with the boxset.

I again write the attorney for the rights holder and tell him that I don’t see any evidence of counterfeit, that it was a new sealed item, and that we obviously can’t open new items and inspect them because they wouldn’t be new anymore.  They ignore me.

About a week later I had a dream.  I was on a brand new cruise ship with a brand new crew and I was staying in a brand new cabin. The weird part was that I couldn’t find my cabin because they were all brand new and they all looked the same.

Within 2 minutes of waking up, I literally said “holy s**t!” out loud.

The item was new.

Which means it probably wasn’t mine.

To explain,  Amazon.com FBA has a program called “co-mingling”.  What this means is that if you are in the program, and I am, if you send a new sealed item to FBA, you do not need to place an inventory sticker on it like to do for every other item you send to Amazon.  You don’t have to sticker it at all.  What Amazon does with your item is co-mingle it with all of the sellers of that item who are also in the program and Amazon’s own inventory and when they sell that item they pull a unit at random from their co-mingled stock.

In other words, the physical item I sent to Amazon may or may not have been the physical item the customer received! The item wasn’t mine.

This time I got the attorney on the phone.  I explained the situation to her, and she said “Mr Harmon, in California copyright law, we don’t have to prove that the item was yours - just that we bought the item from your user id on Amazon”.

So I called more attorneys, who were all willing to help me for $25,000. They would not verify what the rights holder’s attorney had told me, but they’d be happy to look it up for $25,000.

Ironically and suspiciously, a few days later my phone rang and it was an attorney from Amazon.  Finally! I could explain this to them and they would reopen my account and I could get back to selling again…

“I’m just calling to inform you that there were no other sellers of that item that were in the co-mingling program,” the attorney said. Oh crap - Amazon and the manufacturer/distributor were in cahoots.

“Ok. But Amazon had stock of that item, correct?” I replied.

“I’m just calling to inform you that there were no other sellers of that item that were in the co-mingling program,” the attorney said.

Mmmmmmmk.

Gang, I would love to be able to tell you that this story has a happy ending, but the fact is that I lost the court case.  I’m the proud owner of a giant fine that will bankrupt me.

The title of this article is “Third Party Sellers Need To Rethink The Amazon.com  FBA Program,” so let’s think through why I have said that:

1.  I was an Excellent rated seller on Amazon with 97% positive feedback.  We had never had a complaint for counterfeit, so the ratio stands at 169,013 to 1, or .00000592% . Amazon holds sellers to the highest standards in all of the 3rd party selling industry - that fact alone should have warranted some defense against this claim.  Yet Amazon just stepped aside and let a giant corporation obliterate me. I should also point out that the same company has sued over 80 other sellers in the same manner in the past 8 months.

2.  Once your product is at FBA, they’ve got you.  Amazon can raise fees on you, which they have done, and they can even implement fees that didn’t even exist when you sent them the items. A few years ago, Amazon implemented a new fee called a “long term storage fee” where they clobbered any seller with storage fees for items in Amazon’s warehouse for over a year.  That one cost me $50,000 in product I was forced to destroy.  As I’ve already explained, Amazon will charge you a fee to return your product or destroy it.

3.  For the love of all that’s holy, NEVER agree to use Amazon’s co-mingling program.  If you do, my situation proves that you are liable for other sellers products, not Amazon.

To prove my co-mingling point even further, I recently ordered Amazon to return some items to me so I can resell them and recover some fees.  When we sent out all of our items to the FBA program, they all went to 2 different Amazon warehouses.  Now that I’m receiving them back, guess what?  So far, the new sealed product has arrived back from 9 different warehouses.  Yep, they’re sending back someone else’s new sealed items to me.

This situation literally breaks my heart.  I was a HUGE proponent of Amazon’s FBA program for a long time.  I counseled other sellers to use it, I wrote about it, and I loved using it.  There are thousands of other FBA sellers out there, and I used to think about how smart we all were to outsource major components of our businesses to Amazon.

Now? Yeahhhh not so much.

Best,

Kevin Harmon

kevin@redshortsmedia.com

Kevin on Twitter

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I love to blog and work with social media.  Let me know if I can help you!

Starting a business out of your garage? Check out these insights!

You’ve heard about entrepreneurs who start their businesses in their garage and become true successes. What is their secret? Well, recently I found out about Pervaiz Lodhie. He started LEDtronics, Inc., www.ledtronics.com, in his garage with his wife, Almas, in 1983.

Today, he has a very successful business headquartered in Torrance, California providing LED (light-emitting diode) products worldwide and is known as the pioneer of LED lighting. I interviewed Pervaiz to get some of his inside secrets, and here’s what he had to say:

Tell us how you started your LED lighting business.

When I started testing and packaging LED’s almost 40 years ago I was a junior partner of Data Display Products started by my elder brother, Qamar Lodhie. At that time, there were really no LED solutions to replace the issues people were having with the old technology, incandescent or filament light-bulbs such as very short life, using too much energy, high heat, higher failures in shock and vibration conditions, etc.

To solve these problems, I started creating and packaging LED lights to replace the old, outdated miniature incandescent bulbs as simply as possible. The LED lights were used in control panels, elevators, lighted push-button switches on aircraft and ships, and on control indicators in power plants.

As the LED technology improved, I continued to improve the packages to become more widely used, and I also created additional applications for the LEDs where higher intensities, more pure colors and wider viewing angles were needed.

It sounds like you created LEDtronics by using your expertise to solve important lighting problems your customers were having. With this in mind, what was the biggest challenge you faced starting your business, and what did public relations have to do with overcoming it?

With an engineering background, I did not have the experience to market and find customers. Fortunately, one of the editors of Electronic Products approached me when I was first starting my business and wrote an article about the benefits of my LED products. That was probably the beginning of the revolution. When the article came out, engineers that were looking for that kind of a product suddenly sent requests, and we were immediately getting calls for the products.

Another key reason for my entrepreneurial success was that I looked at the issues and problems of others trying to start businesses. I didn’t want to fall into the trap of investing too much and paying interest for many years and then never being able to recover from it. I was going to start my business in a completely different way with my own money.

Right from the start, I wanted to become the GE of the LED light bulb industry. As I was creating a brand new niche with limited resources, I felt JIT, or the Just-in-Time model, was ideal for me. I developed, manufactured and shipped LED solutions Just-in-Time but at standard cost so there was no premium cost.

This allowed me to have very little inventory requirement, and we still follow this process today at LEDtronics. We carry all the necessary components and then put it together as the customer needs it because there are some common components that you can use. That just-in-time situation allowed me to start and grow my business without borrowing money.

What suggestions do you have for small business owners on how they can compete against large corporations in today’s market?

The concept or idea of the product they want to build must be equal or better than what the competition has. It must have equal or better pricing. It has to have features that the customers of the larger manufacturer identify as needed. It is crucial to have some advantage over the competition because they already have established customers with an existing business relationship, and customers do not easily move away from an already established and comfortable business relationship.

I think that many, new business people make these fundamental mistakes. They develop something today, and they don’t realize that it’s a work-in-progress. They must continue to improve that product and to design it in a way that cuts costs. This way, they can keep the price attractive and keep improving its functionalities in a way that the customer is looking for.

In the first couple of years of starting a business, it’s essential to keep reinvesting every single penny of profit back into the business to allow it to grow. However, just as their business is ready to take off, many new business owners get tired and burn out, and they run out of cash so they give up. Then, all their work is benefited by others.

That’s good advice Pervaiz. Is there anything else you’d like to share with the StartupNation audience?

I think new entrepreneurs should start a company with something they are very, very good at and have full knowledge about. Instead of being a Jack-Of-All-Trades, I took on the challenges that I felt were very easy because of my background and experience as an electromechanical engineer.

I believe the American dreams are still coming about. You just have to do all your ABC’s correctly and anticipate how long it will take your business to take off from the beginning. Have a vision and a picture of what and where you want to be in one year, two years, three years, fours years, etc. Then work towards them and stay focused.

Thanks so much for your great insights Pervaiz, and congratulations on your success!

Do you have a small-business success story you’d like to share with us? Please contact us here.

Insights on “Why ‘A’ Students Work for ‘C’ Students—and ‘B’ Students Work for the Government”

In an exclusive for StartupNation, Robert Kiyosaki, successful entrepreneur, investor and author of the #1 Personal Finance book of all time, “Rich Dad Poor Dad,” offered his insights related to his new book, “Why ‘A’ Students Work for ‘C’ Students—and ‘B’ Students Work for the Government.”

In regard to this financial education guide for parents, here’s what Robert had to say:

Why did you write this book?

I wrote “Why ‘A’ Students Work for ‘C’ Students” for parents because parents are a child’s first and most important teachers—and they have an important job to do. They can truly influence the future of their children, because if they don’t teach their kids about money, they can’t on the school system to do it. Schools teach kids what the school system believes they need to get a good job… which, from my point of view, sets them up to be slaves to a job and a paycheck all of their lives. My poor dad was a well-educated school teacher with a Ph.D., but I struggled in school. I didn’t get good grades and flunked out of high school—twice. In fact: I hated school. But I love to learn. Today, I (the “C” student) hire “A” students, like accountants and attorneys, to work for me.

The financial crisis has just started and as more countries and baby boomers go broke, who do you think will foot the bill for life-support? Your kids, that’s who. And it’ll take the form of higher taxes. That’s why I wrote this book. I want to encourage and support parents who want to give their child a financial head start in life. And it starts with understanding money.

Since the school system is not giving children a financial education, are they teaching our kids to be poor?

I think schools are teaching kids to be poor, but worse than that they’ve teaching them to be slaves to a paycheck. That could be one of the reasons why the dropout rate is so high in schools today. As a young kid back in the ‘50s and the ‘60s, I kept asking my teacher, “Why don’t you teach me anything about money?” I never got an answer to that question.

And today, most schools still don’t teach kids about money. Whether we’re smart or stupid, rich or poor; we all use money in our everyday lives. It’s an important life skill and it’s up to parents to fill the void.

We’ve got to teach our kids about money because the United States is broke. We’ve spent billions on public education, and poverty keeps increasing. The rich get richer, the middle class is getting squeezed harder and harder… and the poor are getting poorer and poorer. What’s wrong with this picture?

Then, do you think parents should train their children to be entrepreneurs?

Only a child can decide that. I wouldn’t decide that for them. I don’t think there’s anything more pathetic than some kid who does what his parents want him or her to do. Instead, give your kids some financial education and then they can make their own choices later on in life.

If your children do not have a financial education, then they will probably end up being an employee or a self-employed specialist. And today, employees pay at least 40% of their money in taxes and the self-employed pay about 60%. Meanwhile, people who own large businesses pay only about 20%, and investors with a high level of financial education and well-structured investments can often pay nothing—0%—in taxes. Very often the people who end up paying the most in taxes are the ‘A’ students who get out of school and become doctors, lawyers and attorneys.

Kids who have a financial education will have more choices in life and not be stuck working for someone else or living off government hand-outs.

What can a parent do to start giving their child a financial education?

I outline some specific activities—Action Steps for Parents—at the end of each chapter of the book, but the most important thing is to make your home an active and fun learning environment. And it doesn’t need to be difficult. You can play games like Monopoly® and CASHFLOW®, discuss the day’s news and learn new, financial vocabulary words each day.

Every day we make real-life decisions about money so start sharing this information with your children. For example, show them what happens when you don’t pay your bills, how tax payments are taken from your paycheck or how you plan for unexpected expenses. You can also help them set up their own small business to learn about money and investing firsthand.

The point is to teach your kids about money at home because they are not going to get a financial education in school.

Thanks so much for your time Robert!

For more information about Robert Kiyosaki’s new book, “Why ‘A’ Students Work for ‘C’ Students—and ‘B’ Students Work for the Government,” visit www.richdad.com.

By Melanie Rembrandt

For many years, it was very difficult to show the results of a public relations, or PR, campaign. After all, you could spend hours on the phone pitching media members and not see any results. Plus, due to the nature of public relations, no one can guarantee results (Hint – if you hear a PR person tell you that they can guarantee results – Run!).

The final say as to whether the media broadcasts or publishes your story is always up to the editors, producers and publishers out there. Basically, you have no control over the final outcomes of your pitching efforts or exactly what will be said about your company if a story does go live.

However, with today’s technology, you can see if a campaign is working or not and make the appropriate changes to save time and money. How?

3 Ways to Get Valuable Reports on Your PR Efforts

1. Start with a plan.

Instead of just sending out a press release because you have news, create a plan with goals. What do you want to accomplish? Do you want to bring more people to your site, increase sales, get more newsletter registrations, or something else?

Once you know what you want to accomplish, figure out how the press release fits into these goals along with your other, marketing efforts and how you are going to measure results.

2. Use specific links.

One way to measure the results of your PR activities is to take advantage of technology and have Google Analytics in place on your site (or another tool that tracks information about site visitors). Include a specific link in your press release or promotional copy. Have that link go to a specific landing page on your site that talks about your specific news. Then, have a link on that landing page that goes to a sales page, shopping cart page, newsletter registration page, etc. This way, you can track exactly how many people click on the link in your press release and on your landing page. And you can also see how many people actually take the actions you set up in your plan.

3. Use Search Engine Optimization, or SEO.

All of your online copy should be optimized for the search engines. If not, you will lose online visibility to the competition. Plus, it’s a great way to track results of your PR efforts. For example, once you optimize your press releases, landing pages and other PR copy for the search engines, check the results. Does your information show up on the search engines for your top keywords? How do your rankings compare to competitors?

Get the PR and SEO Data You Need for Success!

Once your PR copy goes live, look at your Google analytics and search-engine results. Did you reach the goals you set in your initial plan? Did people click on your links and take the actions you wanted them to follow on your site?

If not, look carefully at the data and figure out what your site visitors clicked on most. Then, develop your next PR plan. But this time, make changes using what you learned from the data. Do the entire process again, and check your results. Over time, you’ll figure out what works best for your specific target audience. Then, you can start to take advantage of the PR and SEO copy and activities that work and avoid wasting time on those that are not.

Today, you can use online data to track exactly what your customers want to see and what your competition is doing. By having a plan, using SEO and strategic landing pages and links on your site, you can see specific results from your PR efforts.

For more information to help boost sales with SEO and PR, please visit www.rembrandtwrites.com.

If so, it’s time to create (or update) your specific goals for today, this week, this month, and this year.  To start, write down exactly what you want to accomplish. Then, figure out what you need to do to meet your goals in a specific timeframe. And once you have your goals written down…

•    Take Action!

It’s time to take action! This can be the hardest part of accomplishing anything. But if you don’t do something, nothing will happen. It’s like Wayne Gretzky says, “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.”

Start small. Read a book. Conduct online research. Call current customers and ask for a referral. Just do something. You’ll either take a step forward towards making your goals a reality, or you’ll learn something about yourself and your business.

•    Review.

Did you accomplish the goals you set last year? If not, why not? Write down what you will do differently this time to make positive things happen. You can learn from your failures, but only if you make the effort to do so.

It’s time for new beginnings and a fresh start. What are you going to do today to start making your dreams a reality this year?

For additional tips to help you launch your PR and SEO goals, please write to me below or at www.rembrandtwrites.com.

It’s tax time, and if you are a small business owner, you are probably dealing with financial statements, legal payments and lots of paperwork. Even if you have a team of people to help you, this time of year can be overwhelming. After all, you have to make sure all of your paperwork is filed correctly while keeping your business running.

Well, instead of stressing out, here are a few quick tips to handle this busy month:

·        Write A Plan.

If you have deadlines at work, tax activities to finalize and other responsibilities, take a moment to write everything down. Then, look at what you need to accomplish first and what is most important.

Sometimes, it’s impossible to do it all so look at your priorities and the things you really want to accomplish. Then, write down a schedule of what you are going to do and when. If other activities come up that aren’t part of your plan, just say “No” or adjust your plan accordingly.

·        Get Help.

What are the top things you need to take care of this month? If your site and social media need updating, your files are a mess or you have administrative tasks that need to be taken care of, think about hiring a part-time assistant, getting an intern or getting family and friends to help out.

While you may want to do things by yourself to save time and money, you can save yourself a lot of stress by turning over projects to others. Hire a professional, SEO copywriter to help you update your online marketing messages and Website. Enlist your kids to help you clean your office. Bring in a temporary assistant to help you with administrative and office tasks. Before you know it, the work will be done, and you can relax a little!

Don’t Do It All!

As a small business owner, it can be easy to want to do it all. Yes, you’ll have control over everything, but at what cost? You’ll get all the work done, but what kind of sacrifices are you making in the process with your health, friends and family life?

Take the time to get organized and find the right people to help you out. Then, you can get all of your work done, prepare your taxes and still have some time for fun activities and down time.

Need more tips to help reach your sales goals with PR and SEO copywriting? Please write to me below or at www.rembrandtwrites.com.

Here are three, key questions to ask yourself to help stay on track with your business goals.

1. What is your Website saying?

When people visit your Website, what message do they receive?

If there are broken links, old blog entries and boring content, you will lose potential, new customers fast. These things may be on the bottom of your “to do” list, but it’s important to move them up as a priority. After all, you may be losing thousands of dollars in sales from one, faulty link!

2. Do you need to return messages?

Do you have a bunch of e-mail and voicemail messages to return?

When you get busy, it can be easy to push responses aside and forget about them. But this is not good business etiquette. Return your messages within 24 hours at the most. This way, you can get them off of your list and move on to other tasks.

If you ignore your inbox, you may be missing out on potential business, press opportunities and more. And if you don’t have the courtesy to provide responses, you are creating a bad impression that can reduce your industry reputation, customer satisfaction and overall sales in the future.

3. What is the status of current projects?

While keeping track of your Website content and returning messages is important, don’t forget about in-person interactions. While it may be easier to text a quick message, nothing beats talking to a team member face-to-face. This way, you can check the status of current projects, provide input, answer questions, and ensure things are going smoothly.

And if you are worried about your communication skills or wasting time in a meeting, just set aside a few minutes to touch base with someone on a particular project. Then, use this time to ask questions, and let the other person do the talking. Over time, you’ll get better at keeping your interactions succinct but meaningful.

Relationships are Important.

Business moves fast, but that’s no reason to minimize your communication efforts. Check your Website and provide the most valuable information you can to site visitors. Review your inbox and provide responses to people who are waiting to hear from you. And finally, don’t forget to get out of your office and talk to your team members. This way, you’ll create valuable relationships with all of the people you work with while building credibility that can help increase online awareness and sales.

Are you taking advantage of all the communication opportunities possible to build sales, awareness and credibility? For more information on SEO and PR activities, please write to me below or at www.rembrandtwrites.com.

If they are not going well…

Find out what is happening.

Is site traffic down because you have broken links?
Perhaps, your target-market wants different copy?

Look at your analytics and find out what is going on. If you see broken links, fix them. If your find that your customers are clicking frequently on a particular page, write more of that same content.

By reviewing you statistics, you can find out what is not going well and fix it. More important, you can discover what information is valuable to your customers right now.

If they are going so-so…

Take a look at what is working and what isn’t.

Which pages are the most popular on your Website?

Which marketing campaigns are bringing in new sales and which aren’t?

The great thing about today’s technology is that you can see what activities are working and change those that aren’t for the best results. If you are not taking advantage of Web analytics, e-mail statistics and other, information you can track, start using it to take your activities to the next level of success.

If they are going great…

Good for you! But this is no time to stop.

Look at your analytics and run A/B tests on your marketing campaigns to see what works best. All of your activities can be improved and updated to match the needs of your current, target market.

By providing the most valuable information at the best time, you can increase new site visitors and sales fast. But if you sit around celebrating your success without improving your activities, the competition will start stealing customers before you know it.

Keep Moving Forward.

Whether things are going well or not, you can always be improving your current activities and moving forward. Your customers always want the latest and greatest information. By reviewing your statistics, knowing what is going on with your different campaigns and being on top of customer needs, you can provide valuable information that keeps you one step ahead of the competition.

For more help with your SEO copywriting activities, please write to me below or at www.rembrandtwrites.com.

For the first time in the show’s history, show organizers have dedicated a special area for Inventors to exhibit at this prestigious event. The area is dubbed the “Inventor Zone”, and is sponsored by InventionHome and the UIA. Inventors participating at the show will not only receive booth space on the high-traffic tradeshow floor, but they will enjoy networking opportunities, educational sessions, special Inventor Awards, and a feature in the Aftershow presentation by InventionHome. Only 20 booths are available, so inventors are encouraged to act fast to reserve a spot.

Reserve Your Booth Today - http://inventortradeshows.com/show/globalpet/

If you are an inventor with a product in the following categories, this is a great opportunity for you:

• All pet-related inventions
• Supplies (pet beds, collars, leashes, odor control, crates, grooming, toys, etc)
• Food (bowls/feeding, food, treats, etc.)
• Aquatic
• Health (flea/tick, dental care, supplements)
• Birds
• Reptiles
• Small Pets

The show will take place on February 20-22 at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, Florida. It is presented each year by APPA and Pet Industry Distributors Association (PIDA).

Learn More - http://inventortradeshows.com/show/globalpet/

For help with your invention call InventionHome at 1-866-844-6512.

For more info:

http://inventionhome.com/success/

http://inventionhome.com/why-inventionhome/

http://inventionhome.com/about/

You just went through a mound of résumés, searched the Internet and have reduced your list of IT candidates down to a reasonable amount. Now, the fun really begins with in-person interviews. And if you are new to hiring technology people, or just want to make sure you make good decisions for your business, here are…

3 Telling Signs to Hire the Right, IT People

1. Knows the Company

If the candidate you are speaking to has no idea what your company does or the benefits you offer to customers, end the interview quickly to save time. There is a lot of competition out there for jobs today, and if the candidate can’t take the time to learn about your products and services prior to the interview, how much effort is he or she going to put into the job once hired?

2. Shows Enthusiasm

In addition to knowing about your services, you also want the candidate to be excited about the possibility of working for your organization. If this person has a passion for what he or she does and shows enthusiasm towards your business, this excitement will carry over when hired. And you want positive people working for you as one negative person can ruin an entire team.

3. Has the Right, IT Skills

Obviously, the candidate needs to have the specific, IT skills you are looking for. With this in mind, it’s essential to ask questions about pertinent technology experience to make sure they know their stuff. And if you don’t know anything about technology, find an associate, co-worker or outside resource who is well-versed in technology to attend the interview and ask the right questions.

It’s also important to check references, samples and do your due diligence. After all, do you really want to hire a “nice” technology person just to find out he or she really doesn’t know what they’re doing?

Some Questions Are Obvious

When you hire IT people, there are the usual, job-interview questions that we all know and love in order to find out more about the candidate. But don’t forget to look at the overall picture.

Have they conducted some research about your business?

Do they really want to help your company succeed, or are they just looking for a job?

And most important, do they have the unique, IT skills necessary to help your business reach specific goals this year?

Make an effort to conduct extensive interviews for your IT hires. It takes extra time, but by finding the right people up front, you’ll save yourself from a lot of unnecessary headaches and wasted resources in the future. Plus, you’ll be more likely to find good hires whom will offer creative solutions and help your business increase revenues overall.

Robert LeCount is The Rich Dad Company’s Director of Information Technology. Based on Robert Kiyosaki’s best-selling book, “Rich Dad Poor Dad,” The Rich Dad Company uses innovative technology to offer a new way to think about money and investing. For more information and to increase your financial education, please write to Robert below or at www.richdad.com.