A few days ago, I had the pleasure of joining the Business Women’s Network of Howard County (Maryland) for a lunchtime presentation by Christy Edwards of Aurora Fitness, called “Simple Steps You Can Take Today to Improve Your Health…and Your Business!” Of course, I showed up with my greasy chicken nugget and fries combo from Wendy’s; but luckily, Christy led us in an information-packed session that included a little bit of exercise to knock out those calories before they hit.
A few points that were particularly interesting and helpful:

Food is fuel, not comfort or entertainment.

Christy stressed throughout her presentation that we shouldn’t turn to food when we’re feeling down, nor should we eat just because others are eating.  The trick is to think of food only as fuel: We fuel up to start the day and only refuel when we’re losing momentum.

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Be sure to check out Part 1 of “Go green: All the cool companies are doing it!” to get caught up. Here, we begin with number six out of my 10 favorite tips for going green. As with the first five, some of these are well-known but others may be completely new to you. Dig back into the earthy goodness:

1. Go for recycled paper or at least recycle your own. Even paper that is only 30% recycled makes a difference while being more cost-effective than 100% recycled paper.  You may not even think about how much paper you’re tossing in the trash right now, but make an effort to recycle all of the paper you have and you’ll see a big difference in your landfill contribution.

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For about 40 years, companies have been making efforts to go green. Going green is often mistaken for “environmentally friendly,” when in fact it’s more like “not particularly harmful to the environment” or “environmentally neutral.” There isn’t much you can do that will actually improve the condition of the environment, so many experts say that we shouldn’t get caught up in that line of thinking.

Although I can’t say for certain, I don’t think most business people and entrepreneurs reading this are based in the fields of energy or manufacturing (readers should speak up!).  So I won’t bog you down with details about how to produce things that are energy-efficient; however, these tips can also help those producers:
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Several weeks ago, I’d talked briefly about the importance of building value into your company from the start to prepare for a final sale.  But valuation is just for those who are preparing to sell, right?  As was pointed out in the previous post,  you should be working on building your company’s value no matter how young or old it is.  Businessweek has posted a few articles explaining the why and the how of valuation for small, privately held businesses, and the most recent piece has at least a few interesting pointers.  Here’s a bit of what Neil J. Beaton, who does valuations of new, venture capital-backed startups, had to say.

• “The reality is that people value their companies informally all the time.” In Beaton’s example, you’ve just sold a quarter of your company’s ownership to one or more investors, who have paid a total of $1 million for that piece.  Your company has more subtly been valued at $4 million.  Because transactions like this or even subtler can occur frequently, pay attention to how others are valuing your company to get a real-world estimate.

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Few people would – even if they could afford it – spend a million dollars on a car. But whether we’re talking about a car or a more abstract vehicle, an idea that has a price tag attached to it, sometimes you’d be foolish to not cough up that $1,000,000. An opportunity in the form of a sticker on a car or hiring a broke college student seems like it costs a fortune, but it’ll pay for itself tenfold. These are the business investments that have disguised themselves as typical business expenses. In an article on entrepreneur.com, author Sherre DeMao goes through the top five areas that are too often considered expenses by companies trying to survive the tough economic times, instead of being seen as the investments they are, as large growth companies understand. These five areas are:

1. Image and Marketing: The decal on your personal vehicle is a good step, but as DeMao’s example shows, company-owned vehicles may be an answer to establishing your image in and all around the area. Other investments – like ads in pinpointed locations, a nice suit for networking events and meetings with potential clients, and a professional, fully customized website (hint hint) – will further help you promote your image and even pay for themselves in better exposure.

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You’ve just found your calling.  Whether it’s your first entrepreneurial endeavor or you’ve lost count, you’re just barely getting started and are debating which business structure would suit your new company best.  And if you haven’t already, you should probably start thinking now about selling your business.  Seems counter-intuitive, but a Small Business Trends article explains why you should “think about selling your business – from the moment you open your doors.”

The point that author Peter Renton makes is that many small businesses aren’t as valuable on the market as they could be because they are too reliant on their owners (and of course, the owners are setting themselves up in the bad position here).  Renton articulates that branding your company with your face and name attached to it could put you on thin ice.  ”Your customers may be more attached to you than your product or service. Any savvy business buyer will be wary of that.”
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One issue that comes up with nearly every business startup is that of having a big-name competitor.  Chances are very likely that the product or service you’re providing is already being provided by another company – worse yet, a Fortune 500 company.  The way I see it, there are three things to remember here:

1. The only way you can avoid competition is to not go into business at all.  If the realization that you have competition has crossed your mind, then you’ve clearly already made the decision to start a business – why run away now?  Just remember that competition is a given, and there are plenty of ways to work around it.  The first – and possibly the easiest – step is to find a niche.  People will often pay more if they’ve found something that perfectly suits them.  Another way of dealing with competition is to create a better product or service.  Often enough, this simply means giving “that little extra” with solely the customer in mind.

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The author of Blink, Malcolm Gladwell, and the president of a Cleveland advertising firm, Steve McKee, are both going against the grain – and have a very good point to make, collectively. Reading an article by McKee about why market research can lead a company down the wrong path reminded me of a presentation I heard about, given by Gladwell.  While the former is about minivans and Apple, the latter is about spaghetti sauce and Grey Poupon (and will probably leave you feeling quite hungry).  The former is to-the-point and interesting, the latter more humorous, though long, as it will cut through about 17 minutes of your day.

Personally, I found that points 3 – 5 made by McKee in this article are the most impactive and most relevant.  That Absolut Vodka would flop because it’s Swedish and people were only drawn to Russian Vodka.  That the minivan wouldn’t be a big seller because no one had ever asked for a minivan before it existed.  That New Coke would be a gold mine, discounting the possibility that people wouldn’t take well to the change in its formula.  It has been proven time and again that people simply do not know what they want, and they especially can’t tell you what they want to have or see until they’ve gotten a taste of it.  As is clearly pointed out in McKee’s intriguing article, no amount of market research can be so blindly followed; likewise, he says that “[the] best research is the real world,” which honestly means you’ll watch at least one of your ideas flop.  The good thing is that it happens to all companies, and the giants aren’t exempt from this one.
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It’s been more than a week since I last posted (oops), but I just finished an article from a few days ago about “getting the startup equation right.” This one actually came off seeming hollow – downright boring – because it feels like the topic should be obvious: The idea behind your business is important but equal emphasis should be placed on who is with you for the endeavor. The more I thought about it, though, I began to think of all the companies I’ve heard of (usually when it’s “too late” and they’ve already gone under because a bigger, better company took over their market) and have even seen that simply did not have the right people in place to really carry a company to its full potential.

I also realized that the companies mentioned in the article, for which the author has held leading positions, are big names. They’re well-known companies that have been the ones to shut out other companies by having the right idea and the right people. It’s worth reading, but you may get more out of it if you read between the lines a little while keeping the overall message in mind.

There are a lot of great ideas out there.  Some are all-too-often misunderstood, and the simplest ones are often blown out of proportion – not necessarily by the person presenting the idea but by those who are interpreting it.  Entrepreneur Glenn Llopis was interviewed by BusinessWeek about his idea for making innovation and humanity come together as a side of business that we often overlook.  Llopis suggests that we as small business owners need to learn to not cling to the bottom line so tightly and to start focusing more on the people involved, primarily employees.

While I don’t necessarily see Llopis’ point that small business owners should be all about “increasing your employees’ market value and relevance in the workforce,” I think that he makes a few other points that cannot be stressed enough to entrepreneurs and small business owners:  We can’t let go of the vision we started with; the company benefits from employee branding just as much as the individuals do; and tradition is no longer valid in most areas of life.
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