Sometimes Important Business Tasks Can Get Overlooked

Many times a small business will overlook something important. With us, one of those extremely important things has been customer retention. Don't get me wrong, our work speaks for itself and many of our customers have been coming back for years. The retention I'm talking about are those fringe individuals or companies we neglected because we were either, too busy or too lazy to take the time and keep up relations. The customer came in for a minor piece of fabrication and we let them get pushed to the bottom of the pile, assuming they would never come back anyway. However, those are the customers who may give your name to a friend or family member, making them a powerful resource to keep communicating with.

Earlier this week I received a call from a company called Intuit Demandforce. We have used Quickbooks for invoicing, so getting a call from a company in the Intuit family is not out of the ordinary. Most of these calls I will greet and pass on because they are just an introduction to get you in the door, nothing more. Yet, this one seemed a little different. I got the sense they really wanted to show me what the service could offer, I wasn't feeling sold to. Could be a testament to the sales person on the end of the line but, I felt the risk was worth it and agreed to a web share about the Demand Force service.

From the Demandforce website:

Keeping up with all of the changes in technology and online services is hard, but you need to communicate and market like the big boys or your business won't survive. Demandforce is here to help.
 
We take an award winning communication portfolio, with easy to use <a>online reputation tools and our broad consumer network, to become the marketing team your business needs.

The web share went well and after seeing what Demandforce had to offer I decided to give them a shot. Our account went live today and I am very excited to see how the service will help business over the next month. I really like the people I have dealt with so far, giving me a personal experience you don't get with many online businesses. Everyone genuinely seemed to care about us succeeding with the program.

Updates to follow :)

originally posted on our Facebook Page 

How Will Digital Fabrication Affect The Machines of The Future?

3D printed replacement part for a Dewalt saw

Will there ever be a time when machines can heal themselves? Heal may be the wrong word, but there may be a point where digital fabrication could help machines of the future fabricate their own parts.

Yesterday I was watching an extended PandoMonthly interview with Mark Suster of Upfront Ventures and the Both Sides of The Table blog. Mark is a well known venture capitalist who mainly invests in technology companies.  

Near the end of the discussion he mentioned an interview with MIT's director of The Center For Bits and Atoms, Neil Gershenfeld on Fareed Zakaria's CNN show. A very interesting look at what the future may hold in regards to 3D printing and digital fabrication.

Watch below:

3 Mistakes I Made and You Can Learn From as a Small Business Owner

Have you made mistakes as a small business owner? I know we have and in the early days I'm not sure we even recognized what those mistakes actually were. Over the last few years however and after seeing our business from new perspectives, my father and I have started to recognize and learn from those previous mistakes.

Here are three of our biggest.

Not Paying Attention to The Numbers

When I started working for the company all I cared about was getting to the end of the day. That same feeling you have as a teenager, sitting in class, staring at the clock waiting for the bell to ring. Wrapping my head around being a small business owner, profits and losses of the business and daily invoicing duties were the furthest thing from my mind.

Then the 2007-2008 economic crisis came and the learning process became a necessity rather than a choice. Learning what money was coming in and what cash was going out became my top priority, finding where the money was coming from and where it was going. Basically the lifeblood of the company and I was neglecting what was most important to our company.

If you don't know your numbers as a small business owner, you don't know your company.

Obviously, this seems like first day kind of stuff. Meaning, you should be concentrating on this from the get go. However, my father and I were never businessmen, we are tradesman and the numbers took a backseat. 

We have since learned from our mistakes and I have taken hold of dealing with numbers on a daily basis. Because of these changes we have turned a corner and been doing very well as a result.

Not Embracing New Technology

We have always been scared by big investment, putting large sums of money on the line to grow the business. The conservatism in the family is more of a curse then a benefit when it comes to building a company for success. 

But you can't run a sheet metal fabrication company without embracing some newer technologies along the way to make the job move quick and easy. We needed to learn from our mistakes of not taking a chance earlier in the business. We needed a change for the better and embracing new and proven technologies in our industry was something we needed to do.

So, after dealing with our numbers issues, we took the plunge and purchased more technological equipment to make our fabrication job easier. By easier I mean:

• Work is getting done twice as fast thanks to our new CNC plasma machine
• Money is being saved everyday because we are able to get more out of a sheet of metal, our most used commodity
• Health savings: Our main form of fabrication was cutting by hand. It wouldn't have been long before complications set in.
• Business has increased as a result

Everyone will tell you change is a good thing, but until you see the benefits for yourself, especially as a small business owner, it's tough to believe. We made the technological changes we needed to and are benefiting. Now we are looking for the next machine or employee to help us in the future.

Not Focusing on The Business

We all go through so much in our lives, neglecting friends or family along the way. But when you're a small business owner the last thing you want to do is not make it a priority. The business is your livelihood, the asset keeping you from working for other people. You have the benefit of making a living, supporting your family on your own watch, no one else's. 

Before making the changes I laid out previously, I was not focusing on our company. My thoughts were always somewhere else, leaving the business to suffer. My focus was lacking and it showed, rubbing off on my father and others around us. I gave off the impression we didn't care as a company, that other things in our life were more important.

Don't get me wrong, family comes first, so I am not suggesting you place business at the top. However, I was giving get rich quick schemes, girl troubles and other non-necessary situations priority above what needed the most attention at the time. Our company.

Conclusion

Learning from this mistake has been the hardest of all, but the most rewarding. Strangely, putting my energies into what I'm good at has made much of those other issues in my life fall into place. My focus and organization are better than ever and the business is succeeding because of it.

Small business owners will always make mistakes when it comes to their company. My father and I have made plenty and we will make more. The trick is making sure you recognize and learn from your mistakes before they can ruin the business completely.

ISM Manufacturing September - Business Insider

ISM's monthly report on the American manufacturing sector is out. The headline index from the report unexpectedly rose to 56.2 from August's 55.7 reading. Economists predicted the index would fall to 55.0.

Any number above 50 indicates expansion while a sub-50 reading indicates contraction, so today's report suggests that the pace of expansion in American manufacturing accelerated last month...READ MORE

I try and keep an eye on how things are progressing in the manufacturing sector even though we are the tiniest of cogs in the wheel. Any information is good information in my opinion.  

The news also gave me a chance to try out the Squarespace "Post to Squarespace" button that can be used to post items such as the ISM manufacturing numbers to your blog quickly and easily. I don't hate it.

Source: American Manufacturing Is On A Roll (Business Insider)

Google's Search Changes, Adwords and How It Could Affect Business

One of my goals as co-owner of the business has been making sure our website is up to date, looks good and helps you, the customer, find what you need when searching out a custom duct fabricator.

Creating a quality website with good information and running a Google Adwords campaign are a few of the ways I accomplish this goal. This way, when you search for custom duct or anything related to what we do, you will find us in Google search results.

My time is extended and my expertise resides in the field of metal fabrication so naturally I have hired a quality business, Flourish Digital Strategy, to run our Google Adwords campaign. Since starting we have done very well and the website has brought in some great business along with new, quality contacts. However, any changes can have a major impact an how the campaign runs. Any differences in the way people search, Google's algorithm's or increase in prices is something that needs monitored when deciding how to progress with the campaign.

Because our website has become such an integral part of the business I find myself reading and researching more on SEO, web based properties and best practices. This is especially true when I see something regarding Google and how they process you, the customer's searches.

So this morning as I perused my daily RSS feed fix I came across an interesting article on Huffington Post outlining the new way in which Google processes your searches and how it may affect rankings of your business's website.

From Huffington Post

Google has quietly retooled the closely guarded formula running its Internet search engine to give better answers to the increasingly complex questions posed by Web surfers.

The overhaul came as part of an update called "Hummingbird" that Google Inc. has gradually rolled out in the past month without disclosing the modifications.

The changes could have a major impact on traffic to websites. Hummingbird represents the most dramatic alteration to Google's search engine since it revised the way it indexes websites three years ago as part of a redesign called "Caffeine," according to Amit Singhal, a senior vice president for the company. He estimates that the redesign will affect the analysis of about 90 percent of the search requests that Google gets......Read More

The company I use for creating and running the campaign is great, so this is something I don't feel is a major issue. However, it shows how much our business has changed over the years and how we go about finding new customers.

In the past I would have flown right past an article like this one, in fact I probably wouldn't even have it on my radar. But, the world changes and with that your business. This is only our 10th month of running the Google Adwords campaign and only our second year of any kind of advertising the company in general. 

I made a concerted effort to move the majority of our advertising online because I felt like you, the customer, is busy and usually on the move. The majority of your research for HVAC or duct fabrication will be done on your phone, tablet or late night/weekends on the web. Rarely, I feel anyway, do most people pick up the newspaper for research in regards to a service or trade.

Our business is still majority local and word of mouth. However, the world is moving online more and more everyday, so I must be diligent in making sure our customers can find us easily when searching the web.

How I Rid My Desk of Paper Mountains

I am a note taker, heartbreaker, dream maker.....you know the rest.

I scribble everything on whatever I can find. Fabrication orders, notes, thoughts, you name it for work and life. The office at the fabrication shop littered with scraps of paper listed with measurements, stuffed in folders or drawers for reference and invoicing ect. I would have notes from previous months just stacked up for no reason.

The whole disorganized situation and process became a metaphor for my brain in general. I needed something to get rid of the clutter and still keep me on task. My file system was stupid and broken.

Then I downloaded Evernote.

Wow! What a product and I am now kicking myself for not heeding the warning of others I had read or heard about who praised the service months before. Paper? What paper?

My desk and mind have been transformed into a cornucopia of organization. I can transfer from email, my iPad notebook app, take pictures of paper notes and drawings. Yes I still take good old fashion notes, difference being I immediately recycle the paper after. Nothing is stored in a folder, cluttering a cabinet.

The bottom line being, Evernote has made my daily life simpler in regards to organizing and getting things done at the fabrication shop. Errands are easier to remember and get done. Believe me, I have tried many calenders, task apps, the whole lot of them are mostly terrible. Evernote and a Chrome app I use, Workflowy, are the creme de la creme and have helped me get and stay organized.

Then today I read an interesting little tid bit. Evernote has made a deal with 3m company's Post-it note where you can take a picture of your post-its and Evernote's software can recognize and organize your sticky notes. No more sea of Post-it notes littering your desk and office.

From Wall Street Journal Digits Blog

Evernote’s software will be able to recognize the sticky notes’ distinctive colors and help organize them within the app. In other words, Evernote’s 75 million users may soon say goodbye to the legions of Post-its hanging from bathroom mirrors, car dashboards and computer screens in favor of thumbnail photos of their scribbling.

3M says the app partnership is a natural evolution for people who prefer to jot things down — but are looking for more efficient ways to organize all those ideas. “Paper really is still the easiest way to write a thought down and remember it,” said Jesse Singh, vice president of 3M’s stationery and office supplies division. “This partnership seemed an obvious choice for us for the brand.”

I had read Evernote and Moleskine notebooks had struck a deal as well, which I use and love, with this same technology. I have not yet tried either the Moleskine or the Post-its, but it won't be long until I do.

If you're a note taker like me, run a small business where jotting things down is a must, then Evernote will be your best friend.

I love when technology and the real world make nice and come up with great and innovative things. People will always take notes with paper and pen. Evernote just helps to organize those musings in a simple and easy to use web based service.

Where Have All The Salespeople Gone?

Business is getting better. The fabrication shop has been very busy for the majority of the year. Yes, some of the production can be attributed to our new CNC plasma table, but not all. The business environment seems to be on the steady.

Where does my optimism come from?

 Lack of salesman.

When the economy was tanking I noticed a big increase in the number of salespeople darkening my doorstep. Men and women from sheet metal, HVAC, you name it companies were lurking around on what seemed like a daily basis. Many of the companies I had never heard of because they were based outside our region.

So why would they be talking up the likes of me? 

They were making the trip and extra effort because they needed new business in a big way. Any business would suffice, even the likes of our tiny company, which probably ordered a tenth of what their major customers were buying. They needed cash.

Fast forward to today and none of those people have come within 10 miles of our tiny little shop to hock their wares. Their business is doing fine (or maybe imploded :/) so tiny orders like ours are not worth their breath or gas miles. All my new best friends have suddenly disappeared. 

One thing I have learned about our business since the economic crisis. Watching the flow of salespeople through the door can be a forward look at what may be to come. A canary in the coal mine if you will. 

There are the regulars and the normal flows of new blood, but an abnormal increase can spell a slowing in business. The workload trickles down. If those bigger companies above us aren't doing well, then our drought will not be far behind.