Tag: entrepreneurs

Does Your Brand Need a Refresh?

Your business’ brand (or your personal brand) is the market’s perception, and the value that it/you have.

Sometimes, your company or product/service needs a refresh, or maybe a complete rebranding. Maybe your product sold well at first, but sales are tapering off. Maybe your industry or the demographic for your product has changed significantly. Or maybe you just feel it’s time for a fresh approach.

Joe Krueger, principal of Inspira Consultancy, joins The Savvy Entrepreneur Radio Show to talk all things branding. He shares the learnings of the Pony Tools brand refresh he oversaw while President of the company.

He shares some of the factors that may suggest it’s time for a brand refresh. We chat about the differences between rebranding and a brand refresh. He talks about the importance of market research and feedback, and some different ways you can go about getting that without spending a lot.

Finally, he shares some of the activities you can create to help build excitement and energy around your brand refresh. These can help build new awareness in the market. But if done well, they can also generate employee engagement and enthusiasm.

Listen as Joe shares the story of Pony Tools’ brand refresh, along with a process that you can use for your own brand refresh.

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Tips to Successfully Scale Your Business

Thinking about scaling your small business?

There’s lots of great reasons to scale your business. Scaling often makes you more attractive to potential investors. It lets the founders/owners and other key people in the business grow professionally or allows them to focus on doing the things they are best at and enjoy most. And it can bring in more revenue, allowing the business to expand strategically.

Jeff Galas, CEO of OnPurpose Growth, is passionate about helping small businesses scale. But more than that, he is a process-driven guy who wants to make sure businesses scale the right way.

Jeff shares with The Savvy Entrepreneur Radio Show a bit about his structured process for helping businesses make sure they focus on the right things first, including whether they are really serious about scaling or not.

There are more than a few businesses out there whose owners say they want to scale, but their behavior. There are plenty of others that have successfully scaled, but left the owner(s) unhappy because they lost touch with the things in the business that mattered most to them.

Jeff believes that owners/founders need to be crystal clear about the parts of being in the business that makes them happy and soul-searching about where they want their scaling journey to take them. Jeff offers some insights about his process, and also shares some of the most common scaling mistakes he’s seen over the years.

Every business owner who has thought about scaling needs to listen to this interview!

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Making the Right Hire

Making the right hire for a small business is absolutely critical. If you don’t hire the right person with the right skill sets and culture fit, it may sink your business.

Al & Sarah Katz from FirstSearch share with The Savvy Entrepreneur Radio Show practical tips to help ensure the right people join your company. His first pieces of advice are around whether you really need to hire at all, or whether there are other more cost-effective options. Spending your precious investor dollars too quickly can lead to unnecessary cash-flow crises.

Next, he and his daughter Sarah share some tips on how to make sure you create the right job description. All too often, Al says, business managers come up with a laundry list of skills, without truly soul-searching about what the organization needs now as well as going forward.

Al’s been at this for many years, and he shares his suggestions for making sure your job description is spot on, and then that they process for interviewing and hiring is designed to give your business the best chance at hiring a great fit.

His daughter Sarah helps source candidates, and she offer some great tips as well for people who may be job-searching themselves.

It’s a must-listen for any small businessperson looking to make a critical hire in the near future. Click on the arrow to get some great insights!

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Matriarchy: Coaching Feminist Businesses

Allison Staiger’s company, The Matriarchy, is a great example of a company building a business around a very specific niche.

The Matriarchy coaches feminist women, helping them build caregiving businesses.

The Matriarchy is Allison’s second business venture. Her first, Highwire Therapy, is a counseling practice focused on perinatal mental health.

Allison joins The Savvy Entrepreneur Radio Show to chat about how she’s rebuilt her business after moving from Louisiana to Illinois, and has gone about finding new clients.

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What You Need Before Hiring Your First Employee(s)

Andrea Herran, an experienced Human Resources consultant, shares tips on things for startups and small businesses to consider before hiring their first employees.

Some of the most common mistakes are:

  • Forgetting about or delaying some of the benefit and employee policy decisions,
  • Hiring a salesperson in the belief that they will justify their expense by bringing in lots more revenue,
  • Hiring someone who thinks too much like the founder(s), and
  • Failing to focus on employee development as the company grows.

Andrea’s company, Focus HR, provides not only question- and project-specific H.R. assistance, but is also the outsourced H.R. department for several small companies.

She brings a wealth of practical insights to help startups and small businesses successfully hire their first employees and arm the company for future growth.

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