Q: I’m at the age of retirement and have an opportunity to sell my business. Although I’d like to slow down, I’m not ready to stop working entirely. Any advice?
A: Why not spend some of your time helping promising entrepreneurs start or run their own small businesses? You could share your business expertise, give back to your community, gain satisfaction from seeing others succeed and connect with like-minded people by volunteering with SCORE. Each year, SCORE counselors touch thousands of lives, generously sharing their knowledge and experience so that entrepreneurs can realize their dreams of business success.
Nationwide 10,500 men and women in 389 SCORE offices donate their time and talent to assist America's small businesses. At SCORE Houston, volunteers provide confidential one-to-one and team business counseling and low-cost training workshops and seminars. In addition, many counselors are virtual volunteers, providing email counseling directly from their homes or offices. SCORE members can not get paid for the services they provide to our small business clients.
Counselors come from a variety of occupations and backgrounds. Both retired and working professionals are welcome in SCORE. Many volunteers owned small businesses for years while others worked for large corporations.
Whatever their background, SCORE counselors share a belief that small business owners are more likely to succeed if they have a business mentor to guide them. We currently are seeking new members of diverse backgrounds and experiences to complement our current team of over 70 volunteers in the Houston area.
Our members choose from a variety of ways to contribute to our mission; but, a most of our counselors are focused primarily on helping aspiring entrepreneurs develop their business plans and launch their first business. Many work with clients to find the financing needed to start or expand a small business. Others are involved in organizing client educational sessions, carrying out our chapter treasury and accounting activities, managing our internal computer network, publishing newsletters, or other administrative functions.
New members go through an orientation program to get familiar with SCORE and comfortable with the counseling process. All members stay up-to-date by attending regular monthly training sessions.
In Houston, we share offices and work closely with the Small Business Administration. We have several satellite locations throughout the city. Check out our web site, www.scorehouston.org.
If you have any questions or would like to volunteer, please e-mail us at score37@scorehouston.org, or, call our office at 713-773-6565 and leave a message for our membership coordinator to call you.
Friday, 27 November 2009
Thursday, 26 November 2009
Fun with Contests that Align with Strategy
Here’s a great way for a company that prides itself on customer service to promote itself, and the very concept of service as well.
Rackspace.com, the “cloud computing” hosting company that calls itself “The Home of Fanatical Support,” puts customer service first in its own business. But it also holds a contest for its clients to recognize “one of our customers for valuing customer service as much as we do.”
The 2009 Fanati Contest is now underway (for U.S. customers only). Rackspace clients who think they have what it takes have until Dec. 11 to put together a 5-minute video explaining why they deserve to be this year’s winner.
Here are some of the approaches Rackspace suggests to contest entrants:
• Tell us who you are and what your business does.
• Describe what Fanatical Support means to you.
• If you were going to take a thesaurus to the phrase “Fanatical Support” and use that in your company’s business motto, what would your new motto be?
• Tell us about a time you or an employee went above and beyond (fanatically) for a customer or employee.
• Tell us how you’ve continued to enhance your motto to adapt to your business’ changing needs, culture, and/or growth to ensure that customers stay satisfied?
What a great way to align yourself with your customers, promote your brand, and create increased engagement by among customers and their staff. And it costs almost nothing.
Kudos to Rackspace for showing that marketing (in this age of clutter) can still be about good ideas that benefit buyers and sellers alike.
What’s your brand? How could you get customers more excited about it, and promote it to the rest of the world, by organizing a contest of your own?
Rackspace.com, the “cloud computing” hosting company that calls itself “The Home of Fanatical Support,” puts customer service first in its own business. But it also holds a contest for its clients to recognize “one of our customers for valuing customer service as much as we do.”
The 2009 Fanati Contest is now underway (for U.S. customers only). Rackspace clients who think they have what it takes have until Dec. 11 to put together a 5-minute video explaining why they deserve to be this year’s winner.
Here are some of the approaches Rackspace suggests to contest entrants:
• Tell us who you are and what your business does.
• Describe what Fanatical Support means to you.
• If you were going to take a thesaurus to the phrase “Fanatical Support” and use that in your company’s business motto, what would your new motto be?
• Tell us about a time you or an employee went above and beyond (fanatically) for a customer or employee.
• Tell us how you’ve continued to enhance your motto to adapt to your business’ changing needs, culture, and/or growth to ensure that customers stay satisfied?
What a great way to align yourself with your customers, promote your brand, and create increased engagement by among customers and their staff. And it costs almost nothing.
Kudos to Rackspace for showing that marketing (in this age of clutter) can still be about good ideas that benefit buyers and sellers alike.
What’s your brand? How could you get customers more excited about it, and promote it to the rest of the world, by organizing a contest of your own?
Friday, 6 November 2009
Quick: What does Small Business want?
My column in this week’s Financial Post tells about my recent encounter with billionaire Scott Cook, co-founder of Intuit (Quicken, QuickBooks, etc.).
Cook came to Toronto last month to kick off an Intuit Canada campaign to get closer to the small business market by holding information sessions with working entrepreneurs across the country. Cook himself facilitated the first one, asking 14 Toronto business owners about the problems that keep them awake at night.
So my story looks at small business’s most urgent needs today, as well as how one company is getting closer to that market in order to identify the problems it can actually solve.
FYI, here are some of the key issues Cook heard about:
"Growth timing: When to take on extra fixed costs."
"When to expand and why."
"Compliance with tax authorities... Managing cash flow. Seeking investors."
"Work-life balance."
"How to persuade prospects of our value."
"Getting faster responses from customers."
"How to manage the time suck of social media."
"When to cut prices."
"Developing an online presence."
"Partnership and collaboration."
"Finding distribution channels."
"Cutting costs."
"Hiring, training, and when to fire."
After the meeting, I asked Cook if he'd heard any promising ideas. One big one, he said: "Social media as a time suck."
"I don't claim I understand it yet," he said, "but it's given us more to do."
Cook came to Toronto last month to kick off an Intuit Canada campaign to get closer to the small business market by holding information sessions with working entrepreneurs across the country. Cook himself facilitated the first one, asking 14 Toronto business owners about the problems that keep them awake at night.
So my story looks at small business’s most urgent needs today, as well as how one company is getting closer to that market in order to identify the problems it can actually solve.
FYI, here are some of the key issues Cook heard about:
"Growth timing: When to take on extra fixed costs."
"When to expand and why."
"Compliance with tax authorities... Managing cash flow. Seeking investors."
"Work-life balance."
"How to persuade prospects of our value."
"Getting faster responses from customers."
"How to manage the time suck of social media."
"When to cut prices."
"Developing an online presence."
"Partnership and collaboration."
"Finding distribution channels."
"Cutting costs."
"Hiring, training, and when to fire."
After the meeting, I asked Cook if he'd heard any promising ideas. One big one, he said: "Social media as a time suck."
"I don't claim I understand it yet," he said, "but it's given us more to do."
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