Staying inspired over a long period of time is not the easiest thing for an entrepreneur to do. Take this blog for instance. I love sharing my thoughts, ideas, and experience, but it’s not always easy to pick up the laptop and bang out an article. Actually, it can be downright difficult, which is why most blogs have a short shelf life and probably why Twitter is growing by leaps and bounds. If you want to become successful, you need to stay the course. To stay the course, you need to constantly stay inspired, even if it is only a quick burst to get you through the next task. The following five things (in no particular order), inspire and fire me up:

1. Listening to good music: This might seem like an obvious one, but that’s because it is. Not only is it obvious, but music is incredibly powerful. It has made people kill before, and fall in love, and with some songs, both at the same time. So why couldn’t music help get your creative juices flowing? When you have some free time, put together three playlists for three different moods (amped, mellow, and bored) of songs that just rock your world. As I write this, I am listening to Daft Punk’s “Harder, Faster, Stronger.” The next track coming up is “Sea Legs” by the Shins. This article flows quickly and words come easily.

2. Reading: There is nothing like reading a good article to help put things in perspective. While I love reading great books, l look for the quick inspiration in a magazine article. Nothing should fire you up more as an entrepreneur than reading about an amazing success story. Recently, I picked up the latest issue of Inc. and read an article about the founder and CEO of Zappos.com. I had recently been on this kick of how to continue to improve the mobileStorm culture and after reading about what Tony Hsieh did with his company, it truly inspired me to approach culture from a different angle. I like to keep articles like this around that I can quickly access when I need a jump start. Bookmark a bunch of great articles and store them in a folder called “clear!”.

3. Checking out the competition: If this doesn’t light a fire under your ass, nothing will. Don’t just check out any competitor–study the one you admire the most. There is a company in my space (I won’t mention any names) who just gets it. They have made their service incredibly easy to use and understand. They also have a ton of resources and articles for the small business owner. I always seem to work really hard two minutes after leaving their site.

4. Calling friends or family: I hope everyone has a family member or a friend he can lean on. Having a good conversation with someone who believes in you can really lift your spirits, especially when it is coming from someone you admire. I am blessed with a number of high-profile businessmen who are sincere about my success, and a wife who always knows how to make me feel special.

5. Thinking about a future product: I love imagining what my new website will look like, or how our next version of software will function. Your imagination can run so wild, it would give your product manager a heart attack. The best part about daydreaming is that there are no boundaries. I love to start thinking about features that are not possible to develop anytime soon. I think about how they would work and how many big deals I could close as a result. It definitely gets the juices flowing and fires me up for the future.

I know I am over due on a blog post, sorry everyone. I just wanted to talk about something real quick that really pisses me off. Imagine for just a second as a entrepreneur your business was failing because of bad decisions you made. You are about to get bankrupt but at the last minute your mom, dad, brother, uncle and grandpa come in and hand you a million dollars to keep the business alive. As investors they get access to your financial. You report your numbers two months after they give you money and there is a new line item on your P&L statement called “Executive Bonus”. In this column shows a $100,00 bonus paid to you. You have a family function that night and you roll up in a brand new BMW. Think for one second how upset your family would be.

You would have to be a complete narcissist to conscientiously accept that money, hand yourself over a 10% bonus, and then have the audacity to show up in a new car.

Well folks this is exactly what happened with AIG and you are the family who bailed out your relative.  Like a cold hearted killer, they callously took the money with no regard to your feelings or thoughts.

Granted I am few days late on this post (recently a lot of the major execs gave back $50 million) but

a.) Would they have done this if we didn’t call them out on it?
b.) Who are the jerks who have not returned anything?

I am sorry but you do not get a reward in life when you fail. This turns Darwin’s survival of the fittest upside down huh?

Today, “we the people”, received notice that we are in an official recession. Like “we” didn’t realize that. I believe now more than ever employees need to be working at 100% capacity and everything they do should be tracked and accounted for. There is no room for redundancies or employees not willing give you their all. I have never received so many job applications in my 9 years of running mobileStorm than I have in the last two months. What does this mean? Well it means there is a lot of talent out there and people who really want to work. To ensure everyone is kicking ass, you need visibility. This can be achieved through KPI reports.

I am currently working with all my managers and employees to create KPI reports, or Key Performance Indicators. We keep things simple and track everything in excel. This report should be collaborative and agreed upon by your employee and you. What you want out of this report is tracking on all your employees key activities on a weekly basis. You should also set monthly quotas or goals. You want to be able to track how much activity is happening, while also tracking if goals are met. For example the head of my Client Services division has a KPI report that consists of “# of support issues”, and “how people are contacting us (i.e. phones, email, chat etc..)”. Not only do I want to track all of the activity but I want to see this on a week-by-week basis, so I can see any potential trends. Why did we get an abnormal spike in phone calls last week? Did we have system issues? Should we try and push people more to email and chat since phone support costs more money? Also one of the goals might be to reduce the time to chat from 10 minutes to 5 minutes. Did he make this goal? If not, why? These are just a few reports (or lines) on the KPI report but you can see how important it is to track everything and show it over a period of time. Each one of his reports is responsible for their own KPI, and ultimately he compiles one large report and has that ready for me to review, which we also use in board meetings.

Every employee should be accountable. Just make sure the reports mean something and they help you make decisions. If you have having them track every little thing, it is going to take away from their overall productivity.

Jared Reitzin
Small Business Help

I found this report recently on The Business Sheet called The Biggest Losers and it basically gives you a breakdown of the top 20 global moguls who have gotten creamed in the recent economic collapse. Some of the smartest businessmen in the world are making horrible decisions, but is it their fault? Nobody could have predicted anything this dramatic going down.

So why am I telling you to start buying stocks?

Ever heard of beginners luck? Have you ever played poker and in your first “no limit” game you somehow walk away with 5x more than you sat down with? Poker pros get so upset when beginners win because they know the beginner has no idea when to hold them, or when to fold them. Beginners do not think too hard about a move they are going to make, and they certainly do not follow a specific play book. They just bet and hope for the best. I would say more often than not, novices walk away with a profit their first time out.

Aside from the well publicized fact that a ton of good companies have lost a huge portion of their market cap for no apparent reason, pros have no idea what to do at this point and it seems to me if you have some extra money to invest, now would be the perfect time to “go all in”.

In less than a week, I am up 35% on 4 companies. I got a tip here or there, but mostly went with my gut and invested in companies I like, and would continue to buy stuff from. I have this strange feeling in a few years pros are going to look at me with disgust; just like Hellmuth after taking a bad beat at the World Series.

Make some money and tell me about it.

Jared Reitzin
Small Business Entrepreneurship

 tremendous growth over the next few years. A recent Juniper Research study says that coupons delivered and redeemed via mobile phones are forecast to be used by some 200 million mobile subscribers globally by 2013. If you have thought about getting into mobile marketing, this really is the perfect promotional channel and I think I do a decent job painting this picture. Visit the URL below, fill out some info on the left hand form and enjoy!

Watch Now!

1. Save Money: In this economy, cash is king, and with credit being hard to come by these days, make sure your business has ample cash. This should be your top priority, which is why I have listed this at #1. I heard a line the other day: “raise your own round.” All companies can do this simply by leaving no stone unturned. I got sick for nine days in September and it was the best nine days I have ever spent at home sick. It gave me a chance to clear my mind and pour over our financials. I was not distributed by phone calls and the day-to-day tasks of running the business. Maybe getting sick isn’t ideal, but think about getting away for a couple of days and focusing solely on saving money. I put a plan into action during that time that ultimately led me to save mobileStorm close to $40,000 a month. I looked any possible redundancies, I looked at vendors we were spending too much on and asked them for discounts, and we got rid of services we didn’t really use or even realize we weren’t using. The most important thing you can do right now is get profitable. Read my previous post on tips for saving money.

2. Conserve cash flow: Make sure you have ample cash flow by following these simple rules.

• Delay vendor payments: Don’t pay that net 30 in 15 days. Pay your vendors at the last possible due date. And/or…
• Ask for early payment discounts: Talk with your vendors and see if they will provide you with a discount to pay when they need the money.
• Lease stuff: Instead of buying that next server, look into a leasing program. Yes, you end up paying more in the long run, but at least you will have more cash now, which is definitely worth the fees.
• Get aggressive credit: Having a line with the bank certainly helps cash flow. It’s tough right now to get any credit, but banks cannot stop lending; this is their core business model. There are banks out there that are willing to help you–you just need to seek them out.

3. Outline your goals: How much do you want to gross in 2009? How much do you want to net? What products do you plan on launching? Who do you want to hire? What do you need to fix? Even though these things might be in your head, write them down and even put target dates next to everything. Challenge yourself to meet these goals and have your board or advisors beat you over the head and hold you to them.

4. Learn something new: Take an online course in something at which you need to be more proficient. If you lack organization or project management skills, become better at it by either reading a great book like “Getting Things Done” and sticking to the principles or take an online course. As a business owner, you don’t have the luxury of always having the right talent around to learn from. You should always be growing and learning new things personally. A lot of business owners are not great at understanding financial information such as balance sheets or cash flow reports. Challenge yourself to become an expert in an area so crucial to your business. But remember, as the CEO, you don’t need to know it all, just learn enough so you can understand and ask the right questions. Then when you can afford it, hire some bad ass.

5. Sell: Never forget the best sales person at your company is you. Do not make the mistake I did and have your pipeline disappear because you get too involved in something else. You should have a goal to make a certain number of phone calls/emails per day. I always spend the first hour I get in going through my inbox; then I spend the rest of the day (until about 3pm) on the phone closing. Only after that do I work on product development or marketing initiatives. ABC–always be closing!

I hope everyone kills it next year. Except my competitors, I hope you lose lots of business to us.

Love,

Jared Reitzin
Small Business Help

Listen now!

Los Angeles, CA (PRWEB) – mobileStorm Inc. (www.mobilestorm.com), a leading provider of digital marketing solutions and services, will present a free webinar on how mobile coupons can boost B2C sales during a difficult retail season

“If you could design a perfect marketing promotion it would have these characteristics: Immediate reach; 100% (or close) attention from the recipient; being trackable directly to a specific action by that specific target; customized to the target’s wants and needs; and an extremely high ROI with low startup and ongoing costs,” said Jared Reitzin, founder of mobileStorm. “Guess what? Mobile coupons do this and more.”

The webinar, “Making Money with Mobile Coupons,” is scheduled for 11 a.m. November 11, 2008 (Pacific time) and will be led by Mr. Reitzin. To register, please go to https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/846137529. The discussion will focus on how the integration of mobile coupons into marketing campaigns can maximize revenue for small- to medium-sized businesses. Attendees will also receive specifics on how to launch a mobile coupon campaign, expected start-up costs, and success stories of companies using mobile coupons today.

Topics to be addressed include:

• Consumer response to coupon offers sent to mobile phones.
• Using mobile couponing to increase sales and support consumer loyalty programs.
• Best practices for SMS mobile coupon campaigns.
• Choosing the right SMS coupon technology.

Mobile coupons are an ideal way to encourage spending during an economic crunch. mobileStorm Coupon Management is a complete, do-it-yourself digital coupon creation and distribution system for digital marketing campaigns.

Marketing professionals interested in attending the Webinar can sign up by the following methods:

• Email: sales@mobilestorm.com
• Online registration: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/846137529
• Phone: 866-492-7886, ext. 1

Let’s do some math (these numbers are fictitious). Let’s say they paid us $100 per month for service, and their overages were $600. If I would have just charged them the additional $600, I would have made a good chunk of change that is equivalent to six months of their service. Their contract was up the following month. Based upon their financial situation, I could almost guarantee you that they would have cancelled service. So I would have made $600, but lost their business. By calling them up and working out a deal with them, I was still able to get some money in overages because, let’s face it, we have our hard cost, and I was able to increase their agreement for another 12 months. So instead of losing the client the following month and only making $600, I am now able to keep the customer on for another 12 months, making an additional $600.

But money aside, so many other good things came out of this that I would not have ever imagined. By personally calling them up and talking them through their dilemma, it showed that I cared (which I do). I was able to lower their costs which made them so happy it triggered a series of other events.

I had to take a trip to Miami recently where this company is headquartered. I reached out to this company to let them know I was coming into town for a convention and offered to meet them in person and grab a drink. They were so thankful that I helped them out that they told me to not make any hotel reservations because they were going to comp us two nights at one of the top hotels in South Beach. But wait–it gets better. The people I met turned out to be really kind and gracious. They not only took care of our hotel rooms, but they took us out, bought us drinks, and even introduced me to contacts at four other companies, all of which I am currently in communication with to switch their providers to mobileStorm.

I got so much more than I asked for and it simply stemmed from caring about each and every customer no matter the size. By being proactive, I not only earned a customer for life, but I received more than I ever imagined when I first picked up the phone to give them a call.
During these hard economic times, it’s important that you get creative. If your overhead is $.75, it’s much better to make a dollar than nothing at all. Challenge yourself to get creative with your customers and keep them happy, because if you won’t, the competition will.

Jared Reitzin
Entrepreneur Tips

We are witnessing economic crises of massive proportions. I don’t claim to be a financial guru that understands the market complexities. Hell, I don’t even remember the 1987 housing market crash, but I do know it’s tough times out there and even though my industry, I believe, is somewhat recession proof, I am for the first time starting to see some of the effects.

As an entrepreneur, you need to stay in the game, so what should you do? The first thing to remember is that it is important not to panic. That is what people did in 1929, and we all know where that lead us. Of course, at the same time, you cannot completely ignore what is happening. You need a game plan and fast.

Here are six tips that can help your business through these challenging times:

1. Decrease Vendor Expenses: You would be surprised–a lot of vendors right now would be willing to lower your bill rather than lose your business completely. Remember how far life credit goes; read my post about that here. Ask them to give you a “good faith” discount, with the understanding that at some point your service cost will increase again. At the very least, some vendors might even be willing to defer payments. Getting into debt isn’t great, but it sure beats going out of business. You have to stay in the game.

2. Thoroughly Review Your Staff: This is the hardest decision to make, but something that needs to be breached. Now is the time to make sure everyone on your team is earning his or her keep. I hate to say it, but nothing can decrease expenses faster than cutting salaries. As an employer, letting people go because of the economic situation is agonizing. An advisor once told me to rate employees as A, B, and C. The A employees you cannot afford to lose and the B employees you could afford to lose, but only if it was a matter of going out of business or staying alive. The C employees might contribute, but they are the types of employees that would not be hard to replace when you can afford to hire again. Also, Starbucks is doing something interesting these days. They are decreasing staff, but increasing the number of hours each staff member works. Currently, the employee who is working 21 hours is getting the same benefits as the person working 35 hours. They are going to save millions alone on payroll taxes, workers compensation, and benefits, plus they didn’t have to close as many stores as they initially forecasted.

3. Merge With a Competitor: We have all heard of the expression, “together we are stronger.” Some of your competitors might be in a very different situation today than they were just a month ago. It might make a lot of sense to share revenue and expenses. It doesn’t hurt to reach out; you may be surprised. (Thanks to Ric for this advice.)

4. Look for Deals: Some industries are hit harder than others. Business needs to continue to do business so you might be surprised at what excellent deals are out there. Just like the housing market, if I only had more cash there are such amazing houses on the market that are hundreds of thousands of dollars less than just six months ago. However, you don’t have to be cash rich to get deals–you just need to be smart about how you go about it. There is a website that we often like to advertise on which has had a number of their regular advertisers disappear. I saw the perfect opportunity to come in with a lower bid and, not surprisingly, it was accepted. Website traffic is not down, but ad spending is, so you can still reach your intended audience without paying a premium. When everyone is making money, why offer deals?

5. Cut Down on Travel: This always happens to be an expensive category in which businesses tend to go over budget. With Skype video conferencing, IM, and email, you really don’t always have to travel to get the deal done. Think twice before you go anywhere and ask yourself if you absolutely need to be there. There have been a few tradeshows that we have decided to not ship our booth and exhibit to, but rather obtain a speaking gig to get some presence, and put a few reps on the floor to walk around and hand out businesses cards. It costs a lot less money to send a few employees than it does to exhibit and ship a thousand-pound booth. Also, if you have employees that fly into your headquarters, look into cutting their trips to two days and one night. Have them fly in early the first day and take the red eye the second day so you can get as much time in with them as possible.

6. Pay Attention to Your Credit Line: The banks are waiting for the first chance they get to close down your credit line. Check your D&B score and make sure you don’t have any odd late payments. You would be surprised at what occurs. I have seen a magazine company send a subscription to a business and somehow renew it without the company knowing. The company never paid and the magazine company reported it to D&B. This is all the bank needs to legally shut down your line. Also, put your line repayment on auto pay. If you go 30 days late just once, they will shut down your line faster than you can say, “Please don’t shut down my line,” Having a good rapport with the bank means nothing right now. Cash flow is king, and having a line can do wonders. Don’t let it slip away!

I would love to hear what your company is doing to prepare or get through these tough times.

Jared Reitzin
Small Business Blog