You need information to finish a project and send out an email, call and text. Silence.

You call your client and leave a message to get some information for a looming deadline. Silence.

Do any of these sound familiar?

I’ve heard this one too many times in the last few months from fellow, small business owners. They start out with great relationships with their clients, and the communications are open.

Things are going great. The client is making money, and customers are clicking on their Websites and buying their products and services.

And then, the silent treatment starts.

Silence is Not Golden in Business.

Maybe you are so busy dealing with things at your company that you just don’t have time to take phone calls or return e-mails?

Maybe you have something to hide or are just too important to deal with vendors?

Really? While you may be inundated with work or feel insecure, that’s no reason for the silent treatment. Plus, you are missing out on some very important communications that can help you:

•    Save time and money.

By communicating with vendors and giving them all the information they need to provide the best services possible, everybody wins. You get projects completed quickly and that means faster business growth.

•    Develop new ideas to beat the competition.

You may be too close to your organization to spot valuable opportunities. By talking to your vendors and listening to their ideas, you may uncover a goldmine of marketing ideas, products and services that can beat the competition.

•    Build relationships.

Didn’t you hire your vendors in the first place because they were smarter than you about a particular area? If you treat your vendors with respect, they will be more likely to spread positive word-of-mouth about your company. And you never know who your vendors know or if their companies will expand rapidly – You could end up working for them at some point!

Silence is Deadly for Your Business.

If you are too insecure about your skills, fearful of losing your job or just don’t have the courtesy to respond to people, snap out of it! If you want to be successful, it’s essential to treat people with respect – no matter who they are.

Your vendors help you serve your customers so that you can concentrate on your core business skills. If you build a positive relationship with them and communicate regularly, you will save time and money and develop great ideas that will beat the competition… so what are you waiting for? I think I hear your phone ringing!

For more tips on boosting sales, please comment below or see the articles, please write to me below or visit www.rembrandtwrites.com.

Inventors Gordon and Carri B. of Jensen Beach, Florida developed a charming product to help create whimsical vertical displays of flowers very easily.  They call it “Tipsy Tower”.

Tipsy Tower provides a streamlined and interesting way to stack multiple potted plants into a vertical area. The product consists of a rod with two foot pieces and an optional hanging ring that can attach to the top. The powder-coated rod screws into the foot pieces and the ring can be screwed onto the top if desired. To use, slide the rod through the drainage holes on the pots.  Each pot can be tilted so that they stack on top of one another at differing angles.

Gordon and Carri enlisted the help of InventionHome to assist them in finding marketing/licensing opportunities for their invention.

About www.InventionHome.com

InventionHome offers a low cost, low risk solution for helping inventors through each step of the invention process.  They have created a simple and streamlined process for connecting inventors with manufacturers for the purpose of licensing inventions for royalties.

For more info visit:

www.inventionhome.com/inventor-services/

www.facebook.com/invention.home

www.mvelette.wordpress.com/

http://pinterest.com/inventionhome/

It has been a very chic business concept for companies to release their employees from the supposed chains of their offices.  Work from home, work from the road, work from the top of a mountain – technology makes it irrelevant.  I am not so sure.  Rather than calling this movement the creation of an “Office 2.0,” office brain drain is a more apt description for remote work because the intellectual capital of your business is scattered.  With any venture, the whole is far greater than the sum of the individual scattered parts.  I am skeptical of a complete shift away from the physical office for three reasons:

1. Office Culture

Tools like Skype, remote conferencing, video calls, and even our smartphones have made the notion of commuting to a physical office seem less and less necessary.  However, I think businesses are starting to observe the fallout from this type of thinking.  The biggest move away from the trend in “remote commuting” was Marissa Myer, CEO of Yahoo!, banning remote work and calling her employees back to the office.  Her view is that many of the best ideas come when employees meet in corridors, share lunch, or get together for an impromptu brainstorming meeting.  She also claims that workers are less productive at home, where there are numerous other distractions, though this is hard to measure.

“To become the absolute best place to work, communication and collaboration will be important, so we need to be working side-by-side… We need to be one Yahoo!, and that starts with physically being together.” –Melissa Myer

Intuitively, Mrs. Myer’s argument makes sense and real human-to-human interaction is hard to mimic. At StartupNation, much of our team is remote and we have all wondered out loud whether this is the best path to continue down for the rest of 2013.  Imagine the difference in pitching a startup to a VC: “Our rockstar team will be scheming together in our office, building this company” versus “Our rockstar team is scattered around the world, but we will only be an email or phone call away from one another.”  Having your own desk and your own office phone as part of a larger business organism are office details that are here to stay.

2. Time Management

When you work remotely, when does your workday start and end?  You may wake up early, work, then exercise, work some more, get lunch with friends, pick up your kids from school, add a little more work, dinner, work, bed – or some variation on that theme.  While flexibility is touted as the most valuable benefit of remote work, I know many people who see it as a curse.  Without some tangible demarcation between work time and personal time, they lose the ability to truly relax because, in a sense, they are always at their “office.”  Add the fact that your cell phone is your work phone and now you’re chained to your job.  A return to the office means workers can give out an office phone number, rather than their personal cell number, and keep work at work.  It also means that when you are at work, you focus on work and when you’re not you don’t.  Often, this means greater focus resulting in higher productivity in both your personal and professional lives.

3. Go Local

A huge upside of remote work is opening up the availability in a company’s recruiting talent pool.  Instead of looking in just your local area, you can essentially recruit from anywhere.  So while this benefit is hard to ignore and businesses with different branch locations will always have employees across geographies, fostering the personal connection is getting easier.  A great article in The Atlantic reminds us that, despite our feelings to the contrary, airline prices have been dropping all along.  Despite all this, though, going local is a popular theme these days both in what vegetables you buy and who you hire.  Cheap airline tickets will never fully supplement the benefits of having your key employees within arms reach.  Expect to see a swing back towards home-grown talent.

Does this mean that we have to return to the cubicle culture?  Absolutely not.  Open office layouts, casual dress codes, areas to relax and socialize and even grab a game of ping-pong are all positives.  However, what is the point of having a swanky office if there is no one there to populate it?

Whether you are looking to get a story in the news or boost sales, here are a few tips to help you get things going:

1. Find Your Unique Benefits.

What do you have to offer that no one else does? If you haven’t reviewed your products and services lately, it’s time to figure out why you are unique.

Why would new customers, potential partners or media-members, be interested in what you have to sell?

2. Make a List. Check it Twice.

Who are your dream customers? What media venues are most important to you and your business?

Make a list of all the potential customers, partners and media-members you want to pursue. Research each one and find out what they are looking for. Then, make a plan of how you will approach each with a specific pitch.

3. Take Action!

Nothing is going to happen unless you follow up and actually do something. Pick up the phone, go to an event, knock on some doors, and make your move. If you don’t reach out to the people you want to work with, your chances of working with them are zero!

It may be a little scary at first, but you don’t have anything to lose and a lot to gain.

It’s Up to You.

If you want to make fresh, new things happen for your business in the months ahead, now is the time to take action.

Figure out your unique selling points and how you provide value. Then, create lists of all the people you want to work with, research these individuals and make contact.

By taking action, you’ll make new relationships with people who can help your business grow awareness and sales.

But no one is going to do it for you… so what are you waiting for? It’s time for fresh, new beginnings!

For more help with your PR and SEO strategy, please write to me below, or contact me at www.rembrandtwrites.com for more information.

Happy early summer to you wherever you are.  Here in Charlotte, we celebrate 5 seasons: Summer, Fall, Winter, Spring, and Pollen.  I am very happy that Pollen season is over because it was a bad one this year.  This is no lie - there has been more pollen on my car and back deck than snow for 2 years straight. My car looked ridiculous -  it was like a bucket of Peeps had exploded all over my windshield.  So I would get in my car and turn on the wipers and that didn’t clear it off, so I would hit it with wiper fluid and now there was this wet yellow mess all over my car. Fortunately, after I drove somewhere for a very important meeting in my Sunday best and opened the door to get out, most of the time wet yellow glop splattered down onto my shirt and pants so when I walked into the meeting I looked like I just finished making out with Big Bird. May as well stay home and play video games.

Speaking of video games, Microsoft has finally announced the arrival of its’ newest gaming system, the XBOX One. They’ve made a ton of hardware upgrades to it, have added a more sophisticated kinect system, and designed new controllers. It looks like it’s going to be pretty sweet (that’s a term I use with the kids these days so I still seem cool).

In fact, the XBOX One is so different that no current Xbox system games or peripherals will be compatible with it. Yep, the 360 and Kinect games you have will not work on the One.  Neither will your controller.  See what XBOX did there? They just pulled an “Apple iPhone 5 needs an adapter to charge on current Apple peripherals and so Apple sells 15 million adapters for $15 each” new revenue stream on you.  Luckily for you, Microsoft plans to support the 360 and Kinect for a while and even introduce new games on them.  But still - C’MON, MAN!!

Heres’ the fun part if you resell used video games. I’m talking to the small sellers, large retailers, and specialty shops like Gamestop here that share in the $4 billion in annual used game sales: Microsoft wants a big piece of that market.

You see, Microsoft and the other publishers and game makers don’t see a dime of secondhand sales of their products.  Personally, I would be just fine making a gazillion dollars a year creating and distributing games, but we’re talking about large publicly traded corporations and they do one thing - make money.  So Microsoft has figured out how to poop in your sandbox.

How?

Wellll, Microsoft is being a little shifty about this at the moment. We are all hoping that they are going to clear the air about The Plan in the next few weeks at E3, the giant annual video game conference that I have attended several times. It looks like it’s going to work like so:

1.  You’ll buy the game from a retailer. When you install it on the XBOX One, it will copy the game to the hard drive of the One and lock it in to the gamer profile of the person who installed it. It must be activated.  This will make the disc itself useless and unnecessary.  The only person who can play the game is the gamer it belongs to.  No more lending or borrowing games to others.

2.  It gets unclear after that, but retailers are being told that customers can still trade in games, but now they must unregister the game from Microsoft (which wipes it off the original owner’s hard drive) and then pay a hefty fee to Microsoft to reactivate it again. The rumor is that the fee is large enough that the retailer will have to resell used games for north of $50.00 to make any profit at all.

So the overall implications are that a) used game prices are going to go up - way up  b) buying and reselling XBOX One is going to be a giant, expensive pain in the rump, and c) looks like all those people not paying for games are going to have to pay to play - this will do a number on piracy.

I sold DVD’s, CD’s, and Video Games for almost 10 years.  That entire time I knew that the physical media was going to wither and die. I watched it happen firsthand with CD’s.  Let’s all be logical here - what is the point of making a physical disc, and putting that disc in a case, and then in a box with a manual, and then putting it on a truck and displayed in a store for you to buy when you can just download it? We are perfecting the delivery vehicles - iTunes, Xbox, Netflix, Amazon, cable - The need for physical items is literally ZERO now.  So if you didn’t see this giant iceberg coming then I don’t know what to tell you, brother.

It’s not the end of used video game selling, but it is absolutely the beginning of the end.  As I used to joke with my fellow large DVD seller friends, “Why oh why didn’t we just buy a Dunkin Donuts franchise?”

Best,

Kevin Harmon

kevin@redshortsmedia.com

Kevin on Twitter

Kevin on Facebook:

Kevin on Linkedin:

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

]]> http://www.startupnation.com/business-blogs/index.php/2013/06/03/hey-used-video-game-sellers-the-xbox-one-just-pooped-in-your-sandbox/feed/ http://www.startupnation.com/business-blogs/index.php/2013/05/30/seo-content/ http://www.startupnation.com/business-blogs/index.php/2013/05/30/seo-content/#comments Thu, 30 May 2013 13:53:25 +0000 Melanie Rembrandtmrembrandt http://www.startupnation.com/business-blogs/?p=5217 Are You a Trained, SEO Copywriter?
If not, please stop writing your company’s content!

If you are writing your own copy for all of your marketing needs, but you are not a trained, SEO (search engine optimization) copywriter, stop! You may think you are saving time and money, but you are actually losing out on dramatically increased sales and online awareness.

Most people think they can write their own content for their marketing and Website needs. I mean how hard can it be? You wrote all of your papers in school and you know your company better than anyone else. Plus, it can be fun to write advertising and see your work in print.

But let’s get real folks.

You wouldn’t do your own dental work, medical treatments, electrical work, etc. just because you thought you could save a few bucks in the process. The same goes for writing SEO copy. Leave it up to the professionals. The job will be done correctly, and you’ll experience much better results.

Why Spend the Money on an SEO Copywriter?

•    SEO is about much more than adding keywords to your copy.

The search engines are looking for value and so are your customers. When you just write copy with keywords, you are not providing value to anyone. The same goes for purchasing one of those SEO services that will automatically optimize your copy. It doesn’t work as well as someone who is specifically writing for your customers.

•    SEO copywriting is about writing copy that sells.

Yes, your copy needs to provide value, but at the same time it needs to make your products and services shine, increase credibility and make people want to tell their friends about it. To do this, there is a certain way to write marketing copy, and only trained and experienced SEO copywriters know how to do this.

•    SEO copywriting involves research, testing and regular updates.

A good, SEO copywriter/strategist will research and create an extensive list of top keywords for you. Then, that person will craft appropriate copy specifically for what you’re trying to accomplish, and test and monitor it. He or she will then make appropriate changes so that your copy gets the best results possible.

Do You Really Have Time For All This?

Yes, good SEO copywriters/strategists can be expensive. But, if they are good, they will provide results that will exceed the expense. Plus, you can focus on your core responsibilities rather than developing marketing copy.

Isn’t it time you stepped away from the keyboard and had a professional take over?

After all, your competitors are probably using experienced SEO copywriters right now and showing up at the top of the search engines. The longer you keep doing your own SEO copywriting, the more new sales you’re losing!

For additional, SEO copywriting tips to boost sales on your site, please contact me below or write to me at www.rembrandtwrites.com.

3 Public Relations Tips for Your Small Business to Boost Sales and Awareness Now!

1. Post an SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Press Release.

To boost online attention right away, take a look at the press releases at PRNewswire, www.prnewswire.com. Then, write your release by following their specific format (The Associated Press Style Guide format). Provide valuable information to your customers and include your top keywords for the search engines in your header, subhead and a few times in the body of your release.

Once you have proofread the release for errors, simply post the release on free sites online related to news and your industry. You can find these sites by doing a search for “free press release distribution” or looking for sites relative to your products, service and audience. If you want to spend a little money on distribution, check out the many services available and see what fits your budget and goals best.

2. Give a Presentation.

Where does your target market go to get information? Check out various organizations and associations in your local area and offer to give a presentation to their members. Just be sure to provide valuable information and wait to give your sales pitch at the very end of your presentation.

This way, you’ll meet new customers and appear to be an expert in your field. You can even invite local media-members to attend. Who knows? The local television news station may show up to cover your public relations event!

3. Offer a Tip Sheet, Newsletter, Case Study, or Something Cool!

What do potential customers get when they come to your site? Are you providing valuable information and answering their questions, or are you just selling your products and services?

Copywriting is an important part of public relations. If you can create some kind of interesting tip sheet, newsletter, case study, or other, electronic “gift,” you’ll win over new customers and start spreading positive, word-of-mouth.

Just think about what your customers want and give it to them in a way only your business can (examples: Top 10 Ways to Save Money at the Grocery Store, How to Reduce Your Energy Bill by 80% in 30 Days or Less, What Never to Eat at Airports – You get the idea.) And once you are ready to give away your “gift,” send out an SEO press release to announce it!

Small Business Public Relations Just Takes Time and Creativity

If you want to boost sales and awareness for your small business, take advantage of cost-effective public relations activities. Be creative and think of ways to provide valuable information to potential customers. Then, contact the press and let them know what you are doing. This may sound simple, but you can generate a lot of buzz with these three tips. Give them a try and let me know what happens!
If you’d like help with your small business public relations, please provide your comments below or contact me at www.rembrandtwrites.com.

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

Kevin on Facebook:

Kevin on Linkedin:

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.

Does your business need content marketing?

There is a lot of buzz out there about “content marketing” and how it can make your business successful.

But what is content marketing, anyway?

It’s just a fancy name for using content to market to customers. And as I’ve said many times before, by providing value to your customers with good copy, or content, you create a more credible reputation. Plus, if you offer good content, people will want to tell their friends about your products and services.

Why use content marketing?

Ragan Communications offered a great article on why content marketing is important here. In the article, they list “24 stats about the importance of content marketing.”

For example:

“According to Roper Public Affairs, 80% of business decision makers prefer to get company information in a series of articles versus an advertisement.”

And per an article on “Engage the Blog,” research conducted by the Custom Content Council indicates that, “90% of consumers find custom content useful and 78% of people believe that organizations providing custom content are interested in building good relationships with them.”

These are just a few of the many statistics out there about the importance of marketing with content and why copy is still king.

How do you use content marketing?

If you want to increase online sales and awareness fast, start writing some valuable content. Here is a good process to help you get started:

1. Figure out what your audience wants and what you want to accomplish with your content.
2. Write an article or blog about that information providing valuable tips and information. (If you are not a copywriter, hire one to do the work for you. They will help save you time and money and provide better results.)
3. Include your search engine optimization, or SEO, keywords in the headline and throughout the copy a few times.
4. Add a link at the end of your blog or article to a landing page on your site or a page where site visitors can get more information.
5. Track the results with Google Analytics or another program.
6. Repeat!

Content Marketing Works!

If you see this process is working (and it does when done correctly), create an editorial calendar for the year which spells out what topics you’ll be discussing and the kind of content you’ll be distributing (blogs, articles, tip sheets, videos, social media events, etc.).

By creating valuable content (especially with SEO) specifically for your target market, you will bring in new customers and stand out from the competition. For the best results, plan your content in advance and test different topics and methods for sharing your content.

It’s a lot of work to provide good copy on a regular basis. But if you hire experienced, SEO copywriters to help you with the entire process, you will see sales and customer loyalty increase.

What are you waiting for? Start providing great, SEO content marketing and see what happens!

For more information on SEO content marketing, please contact me at www.rembrandtwrites.com.