Blab – Tour of Empty Buildings
Blab.im is a new place to have conversations online with up to 4 people who can see each other. The listening audience can ask questions via a text option. It’s pretty smooth running and meets a lot of needs. Becky McCray and I ran a blab last night to answer questions submitted to us about…
Weed Whackers and Windex
Ninjas Needed I visited Roscommon County, Michigan and toured a few empty buildings. On one corner, a major intersection into town, there was an empty building on each corner. We talked about building possibility, working with the county and the town and hosting a tour. Next to one of the buildings that needed to be…
Christmas is the PERFECT Time to Shop Where You Live
If you’re a small business, you’re neck deep in Christmas. It’s only 23 days until Christmas. We all know how fast time goes, and even faster as you get older. Do you buy gifts for your employees? Many do. Many give out cash. Why not purchase Chamber bucks instead of giving out cash? Ours can…
Sunday Update: One Thing At A Time
For the past month I’ve been working on tackling one thing at a time. I’m attending a mini course offered by a local integrative medicine clinic that meets 5 times as a group and twice with the director individually. We address issues and work on treatment options for weight loss. It’s not learning how to…
Eight Thinks to Do on Small Business Saturday
Buy new furniture. Locally. Go visit your local furniture store and be surprised. The value, the customer service and the attention to detail will simply blow you away. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised at what is now available in the better lines of furniture and how affordable the pieces are. Don’t big box it…
What is Showrooming?
You see something on tv, or online. You go to your local store to actually look at the item. Then you go online, often on your phone while you’re in the store, to find it somewhere else cheaper. That is showrooming. We live in a small town. Small towns need local jobs, sales tax revenue,…
Happy Thanksgiving – Share This Reader
I’m a big fan of Webdancers blog and it turns out they are also big fans of Seth Godin. Seth has made a document available to all of us called the Thanksgiving Reader. Please read below the email Webdancers shared in their enewsletter this week. I couldn’t have written it better myself! (And yes, I’ll…
Nine Marketing Trends
According to CMO.com (an Adobe site) there are 9 marketing trends for small businesses to pay attention to. They are: Binge TV watching – not only can you watch on tv, but the streaming services are providing new value. Netflix, HBO Now, Showtime, Amazon – you can watch tv online now too. Building Media Plans…
Sunday Update: Swinging
Last weekend I had my two great nephews for the weekend. Steven is 10 and Hunter is 4. We played and played and played. On the way back from Ames we stopped in Stanhope at the park. They had slides and log rolling and a rock wall and all kinds of cool stuff for the…
Be Weird
Be Weird No, really … The Small Business Social Media Summit was last month. Over 120 small business people attended – a record number for this first time event. The speaker line up was fabulous, and everyone left with lessons learned and a toolkit to take back to their offices/stores/businesses. Today we’re sharing just a…