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Sales and Use Tax Seminar - Microenterprise & Construction Contractors Seminar on 6-Feb-12 1:00 PM

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 19:00:00 GMT

Sales and Use Tax Seminar - Microenterprise & Construction Contractors Seminar
Start Date: 6-Feb-12 1:00 PM
End Time: 6-Feb-12 5:00 PM
Location: Comfort Inn & Suites, Omaha, NE 68106
Speaker: Steve Drzaic

Event Details:

Microenterprise Seminar

Individuals who make an investment in personnel or depreciable assets for a small business can receive up to $10,000 as a refundable income tax credit! This seminar will benefit anyone who is starting or growing a small business. Preparers will obtain valuable information they can use to benefit their clients. Discussion will include the types of investment that qualify, how to apply and later claim the credit, and use of the applicable forms.

Construction Contractors Seminar

How to properly remit sales and use taxes;
When building materials may be purchased tax exempt;
How to document your tax exempt purchases of building materials;
The proper forms to use when doing a tax exempt job; and
How to properly compute Nebraska tax when doing a job in another state.

Comfort Inn & Suites

7007 Grover Street

Omaha, NE 68106

Turf Management on 6-Feb-12 1:00 PM

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 19:00:00 GMT

Turf Management
Start Date: 6-Feb-12 1:00 PM
End Time: 6-Feb-12 5:00 PM
Location: Comfort Inn & Suites, Omaha, NE 68106
Speaker: Brad Jakubowski

Event Details:

Weather 101: Fundamental Meteorology for Turf Managers

Weather conditions impact turf managers on a daily basis. Turf managers can make better management decisions and provide consistent field conditions by better understanding weather patterns and concepts. This will class introduce fundamental weather concepts and provides turf managers with the tools to interpret daily weather reports, maps, and forecasts. Severe weather issues such as lightning safety will also be addressed.

Maximizing Your Fertilizer Dollar

Get the biggest bang for your fertilizer buck. This class will focus on helping attendees make the best fertilizer purchases possible by: understanding Nitrogen release rates and fertilizer characteristics; learning how to conduct physical quality comparisons of size and uniformity; interpreting labels; and putting it all together by matching product with application rates and times.

Weed Management:

This class defines weeds and introduces an integrated weed management strategy towards controlling and preventing weed problems. Attendees will learn: the differences between annual and perennial weed growth cycles, the cultural practices that either inhibit or aid in weed growth; how weeds can indicate problems with lawns; and the fundamentals of chemical weed control.

Why Isn’t My Turf Green?

This class will help attendees develop a new perspective on how to diagnose turfgrass problems. The goal will be to develop a list of questions to ask when the turf doesn’t look the way it is expected to look. Numerous photos of lawn problems will be shown and discussed.

Comfort Inn & Suites

7007 Grover Street

Omaha, NE 68106

Business Insurace 101 on 7-Feb-12 8:00 AM

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 14:00:00 GMT

Business Insurace 101
Start Date: 7-Feb-12 8:00 AM
End Time: 7-Feb-12 10:00 AM
Location: Comfort Inn & Suites, Omaha, NE 68106
Speaker: Troy Blaine

Event Details:

Insurance Coverages Review:

Property
Boiler & Machinery/ Equipment Breakdown coverage
General Liability
Commercial Auto
Commercial Crime
Workers' Compensation/ Employers' Liability
Inland Marine
Commercial Underwriting

Review of types of policies written:

Commercial Package policy
Business owners policy

Optional Coverage review:

Flood
Earthquake
Directors & Officers Liability
Employee Benefits Liability
Employment Practices Liability
Fiduciary Liability
Professional Liability (Errors & Omissions)
Liquor Liability
Cyber Liability (Media/Communications Liability)
Kidnap & Ransom

Comfort Inn & Suites

7007 Grover Street

Omaha, NE 68106

Hardscapes 101 on 7-Feb-12 8:00 AM

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 14:00:00 GMT

Hardscapes 101
Start Date: 7-Feb-12 8:00 AM
End Time: 7-Feb-12 10:00 AM
Location: Comfort Inn & Suites, Omaha, NE 68106
Speaker: Jim Freitag

Event Details:

This seminar will dive into all the fundamentals crucial for correct hardscape installations. Everyone expects to get the most for their money in today’s climate and in turn can be very particular to the final product. By using the best step practices we will go over in this course, you can ensure a great project each time, and eliminate costly call backs.

Seminar Agenda:

8-9 Retaining Walls

Soil Classifications

Base preparation

Base course

Drainage Aggregate

Geo-Grid Placement

*Columns*

*Free-standing Seat Walls*

Comfort Inn & Suites

7007 Grover Street

Omaha, NE 68106

Beginner Ponds and Pond Free Systems on 7-Feb-12 9:00 AM

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 15:00:00 GMT

Beginner Ponds and Pond Free Systems
Start Date: 7-Feb-12 9:00 AM
End Time: 7-Feb-12 11:00 AM
Location: Comfort Inn & Suites, Omaha, NE 68106
Speaker: Demi Fortuna

Event Details:

This introductory class will cover what you need to know to get started in the lucrative field of Water Gardening, including The Three Types of Ponds, Ponds vs. Pond Free Features, The Four Types of Pumps, Friction and Flow and Basic Estimating. A Handbook with useful formulas and study material will be provided.

Comfort Inn & Suites

7007 Grover Street

Omaha, NE 68106

DOT on 7-Feb-12 10:00 AM

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 16:00:00 GMT

DOT
Start Date: 7-Feb-12 10:00 AM
End Time: 7-Feb-12 12:00 PM
Location: Comfort Inn & Suites, Omaha, NE 68106
Speaker: Inv Gary Burgmeier

Event Details:

Driver Qualification

CDL/Drug Testing

Vehicle Maintenance

Load Securement

Hours of Service / Log Books

General Hazardous Materials

Comfort Inn & Suites

7007 Grover Street

Omaha, NE 68106

Tradeshow on 7-Feb-12 10:00 AM

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 16:00:00 GMT

Tradeshow
Start Date: 7-Feb-12 10:00 AM
End Time: 8-Feb-12 6:00 PM
Location: Comfort Inn & Suites, Omaha, NE 68106

Comfort Inn & Suites

7007 Grover Street

Omaha, NE 68106

Plant Varieties on 7-Feb-12 11:00 AM

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 17:00:00 GMT

Plant Varieties
Start Date: 7-Feb-12 11:00 AM
End Time: 7-Feb-12 1:00 PM
Location: Comfort Inn & Suites, Omaha, NE 68106
Speaker: Marti Neely

Event Details:

Introducing new plant varieties into the landscape.

Every year dozens of new plant varieties are introduced to the public. How do you decide which ones to use and which ones to watch out for? This class will explore some of the newer plant introductions, methods to evaluate their suitability in your projects and best practices for adding them to the landscape.

Comfort Inn & Suites

7007 Grover Street

Omaha, NE 68106

Irrigation Two-Wire on 7-Feb-12 12:00 PM

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 18:00:00 GMT

Irrigation Two-Wire
Start Date: 7-Feb-12 12:00 PM
End Time: 7-Feb-12 2:00 PM
Location: Comfort Inn & Suites, Omaha, NE 68106
Speaker: Steve Pallas

Event Details:

This class introduces Two-Wire Systems. We will discuss where and when a Two-Wire System is the best option, and show how it is cost-effective. In addition, hands-on training for installation (including proper wiring, splicing, grounding and system configuration), trouble-shooting and programming of Two-Wire Systems will be provided. Attendees will be introduced to the ICD-HP for programming decoders and trouble-shooting Two-Wire Systems. We will also show how to use a clamp meter to trouble-shoot and isolate the different types of wire faults typically found in a Two-Wire System.

Comfort Inn & Suites

700 Grover

Omaha, NE 68106

Dealing with Difficult People on 7-Feb-12 1:00 PM

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 19:00:00 GMT

Dealing with Difficult People
Start Date: 7-Feb-12 1:00 PM
End Time: 7-Feb-12 3:00 PM
Location: Comfort Inn & Suites, Omaha, NE 68106
Speaker: Elmer Miller

Event Details:

Conflicts persist among individuals because of the misunderstandings that exist. It has been said that 30 years of hard work in building positive relations can be destroyed in just 30 seconds because of the lack of understanding between individuals.

This seminar will address ways in which you can best create a win/win/win atmosphere as we work together through the challenges and concerns that we face.

Benefits Include:

Developing strategies to best communicate your concerns.
Gaining skills in presenting a positive image to others.
Developing specific individual action steps to deal with difficult people.

Outline

Determining problems and concerns

Understanding the other person’s point of view
The seven (7) most common employee problems
Identifying the problem or concern

2. Strategies to assist with your communication process

Confronting the difficult person
Assessing your approach to dealing with difficult people
Techniques to counter verbal attacks
Strategies to taking a stand with difficult people
Implementing the six (6) steps to resolution

3. Creating a positive image

Being courteous and tactful
Projecting trust
Maintaining a positive attitude

4. Developing specific individual action steps to take with difficult people

Comfort Inn & Suites

7008 Grover Street

Omaha, NE 68106

6 Branding Approaches They Forgot to Teach You in Business School

Fri, 20 Jan 2012 21:00:00 GMT

Do you have all the basics of branding in place, but you are still struggling to create even a dent in your competitor’s market share?

Most companies don’t get branding… and for the ones that do, it’s often not enough. But if you don’t figure out how to climb out of the clutter and ahead of your competition, your company will fail.

So what can you do? Study the following six companies and the branding lessons they learned as they overcame the obstacles in their markets.

Lesson #1: Start with why

Too often companies start their branding journey by building a product they hope will change people’s lives. They’ve spent thousands of hours in research and development on an idea, but when they ship, the product flops.

Let’s look at Apple to learn why that is. Instead of the typical what-how-why advertising message, Apple has always promoted the why first. They’ve promoted the reason behind why they exist. You can imagine them saying this: “Apple exists to challenge the status quo. We emphasize beautiful design. And we make computer devices.”

That’s totally different than if they said, “Apple makes computer devices. They are beautifully designed. We exist to challenge the status quo.”

One starts with the why…the other one ends with the why. This is one of the reasons that Apple is innovative year-after-year and is one of the biggest companies in the world.

In fact, they’ve been trading places as “world’s biggest company” with Exxon for the last several months.

Apple established a movement based on their why and created a following. They enhance the deal by creating beautiful and useful products… so sales rush in year after year.

The lesson is that when everyone involved… from the founder all the way down to the customer… knows exactly why your company exists, then you create a meaningful way for people to see your brand, instead of just another company wanting to make millions.

So, what is your company’s why?

Lesson #2: Never forget the past

In today’s startup economy, most companies don’t have a lot of history since they are younger than four years or so. But if you’re company is only ten years old, it’s dangerous to forget your past when you are planning for the future.

Let me show you what I mean.

The company Blinds.com tries to stay rooted to their history in a number of ways:

They hung streets signs from the ceiling with the names of the city/street of all their offices. This even includes the addresses of companies they’ve bought.
They named one of their meeting rooms “Laura” since the business started as a brick-and-mortar business called “Laura’s.”
They named another meeting room after their first website they started back in 1996: NoBrainerBlinds.com.
They named yet another meeting room after their first real location. That meeting room is called “The Alley.”
They displayed all of the articles written about the company during it’s 16 years of being in business.

If you are part of a company with history it’s important you understand that history and communicate it to all of your employees.

And don’t forget, that foundation includes the why behind your history—it reflects who you are. Neglect to communicate your history and you threaten to weaken a powerful tool to strengthen your brand.

Lesson #3: Create your own market

Jumping into an existing market can be near-impossible. If it’s a competitive or shrinking market you may never succeed. If you truly want to succeed, you need to create your own market.

Way back when e-readers were nothing but a fuzzy concept, Amazon jumped into the market giving early adopters something to play with:

A lot of people felt like they were stupid for taking such a risky move, but they aren’t saying that now with the rise of the e-reader.

And even though the Kindle Fire didn’t turn out to be as great as people hoped and publishers and libraries continue to give Amazon trouble about their privacy and pricing policies, there is no doubt that Amazon… because they created their own market… will dominate it.

What’s the lesson for you? Look for markets like you were a value investor… find markets that are under-valued but have promising growth.

Lesson #4: Rebrand to avoid confusion

When some companies branch out into two or more business lines instead of one, they often run into problems. The problem arises when their name doesn’t fit the new line of business.

This is kind of what happened to Formspring, a company that launched a popular social media product that attracted a different user base than its form-building product that is more geared to businesses.

It was easy to cause confusion between the two products so the company decided to re-brand itself. That’s not an easy task since the former name was pretty popular among the costumers.

What the company decided to do was create an infographics that taught users how to create the perfect landing page with their new brand.

The key to success was that they made something that educated their customer. In the end, more than 100,000 people shared the infographics through StumbleUpon in the last year.

What can you learn from this lesson? Try to make your products as distinct from each other as possible. And if you do end up with brand confusion, don’t be afraid to re-brand.

Lesson #5: Create an awesome user experience

Most products will be so similar to each other that you need to figure out a way to make them very different. And one of the easiest and less-expensive ways to do that is by creating an awesome user experience. It doesn’t matter if you are selling mopeds or haircuts, you need to make your customers feel like every interaction with you is what makes you different.

Look at the iPhone and how it entered into a crowded market. Cell phones were all basically the same before Apple entered the market. Because Apple’s why is built around “challenging the status quo” they created a user experience that absolutely blew away the competition.

This all started with the iPod. Apple floated a minimum viable product out into the market to see how it would be responded to. People went crazy over the iPod so Apple figured that the iPhone, which would cost more to create, wouldn’t be such a gamble. They were right.

How can you create an awesome user experience? Start by looking at the customers of your competitor and see what they is missing from their experience. And the nice thing about user experience is you can go after big competitors without having their deep pockets.

Lesson #6: Stay edgy

You would never think that a 216-year old whiskey company would try to go after the women’s market, but that’s exactly what Jim Beam did.

The company wants to get more nimble and act like a start-up rather than a huge company. The key to making that change was looking into a market that most of their competitors were neglecting.

What was that market? It was women. Most of the big spirits companies didn’t give any attention to women, even with products like vodka where women made up half of the market. The thinking was to advertise to the men and the women will follow. In order to stay edgy, Jim Beam decided to treat them as a profitable market.

What the company ended up doing was adding more brands to their product lines, including a margarita variety called Bethenny Frankel’s Skinnygirl Cocktails that’s a number one selling brand.

That isn’t exactly what you would think a company with a brand like Jim Beam would do, is it? But it’s helping them to stay edgy, and more importantly, very profitable.

The lesson is that Beam discovered what the customer wanted and gave it to them. In this case, it was flavor and lower-alcohol content.

Conclusion

Sometimes just knowing the basics of branding isn’t enough to build a powerhouse brand… you need to look outside the box, take some risks and try something new like companies such as Jim Beam and Amazon did.

Other times it’s re-inventing yourself like Formspring or using your history to motivate you to greater heights as it did for Blinds.com.

Can you share any branding approaches that are unconventional but have proven to be very successful?

20-Jan-12 3:00 PM

6 Business Lessons You Can Learn from the Rise of Dropbox

Thu, 12 Jan 2012 07:15:00 GMT

6 Business Lessons You Can Learn from the Rise of Dropbox

by Neil Patel

You can’t go very far without running into Drew Houston’s company Dropbox. It considered one of the hottest tech companies and its rise since 2006 can teach you a lot about marketing and business.

Let’s take a look at six lessons you can learn from the rise of Dropbox.

Lesson #1: Create a profitable model

This seems obvious, but in a world where people are used to getting most things free…running a profitable business isn’t always easy. Just ask Twitter who is still trying to figure out how to make money. Google figured it out, Facebook is on their way and Dropbox nailed it.

Dropbox gives away 2 gigs of storage space. However, enough people are blowing through that storage amount and signing up for monthly subscriptions. For 50 gigs of storage space you can pay $10 a month. If you want 100 gigs of space, then it’s $20 a month.

Dropbox has over 50 million users and a new user is being added every second…but only 4% of those users pay. Yet, because the number of people exceeding their 2 gigs is always growing, Dropbox could go through 2012 without adding a new user and still be profitable.

Takeaway: The earlier you can figure out how you are going to make money the better. Is it through advertising? Subscription model? Product sales? Service fees?

Lesson #2: Being smart isn’t enough to run a big company

Before Dropbox, Drew Houston liked his lifestyle of just “him and the code.” But during his years at college Daniel Goleman’s book Emotional Intelligence convinced him that you need more than intelligence and a degree to run a big company.

Drew then started to spend his time reading business books, learning how to be a CEO. He then volunteered to lead two organizations at college that amounted to a crash course in project management and getting people to do stuff.

Takeaway: Learn how to be a leader by reading books on business leadership, salesmanship and management. Seek out mentors who ran or are running successful businesses. Ask them to help you grow as a leader. Take some classes or seminars on management and leadership at a local college. And then hustle harder than everyone else.

Lesson #3: Answer a frustrating problem

The reason that Dropbox has experienced such explosive growth is that it’s solved the problem of data being spread across multiple devices like phones, tablets and computers. And that problem happens to affect a lot of people.

Here’s how they fixed it.

Download the Dropbox app, store your files in it and you can access all of your files no matter what device you are using. And if you make a change to a file in one location, that file is updated across all devices. You can even invite others to view these files, making the sharing of huge files easy.

The value is so obvious and simple it’s genius.

Takeaway: Dropbox’s explosive growth is due to their fixing a problem that a giant audience is experiencing. The larger the audience, the easier it will be to grow. Look for opportunities that impact a massive consumer group and present a meaningful solution.

Lesson #4: Make people aware of the problem they don’t know they have

The problem that Dropbox solves, however, isn’t exactly intuitive. In other words, people don’t know that they need a central location to store all their files so they can access them from any device.

This means people aren’t exactly searching for a solution. So Drew and his team had to figure out a way to increase adoption of the product.

One way they tried to advertise was Houston’s co-founder, Ferdowsi, insisted that the home page be nothing but a video telling a simple story of a stick figure losing his stuff and travelling to Africa. People understood the solution Dropbox offered immediately.

The other thing they did was turn their customer base into a sales force. Dropbox told customers that they would give them 250 MB of storage for every referral. The company still gets about 25% of its customers this way.

Takeaway: Use social media, storytelling and your customer base to get the word out about your product. Just because you built it does not mean that the people will come. You have to let them know in a clear, concise and compelling way the problem your customer has and how you are fixing it.

Lesson #5: Stay lean

In the early stages of the company both Houston and Ferdowsi were the sole employees. They did nothing but code day and night, working with contractors on design and development, but never hiring any full-time employees until they got their first injection of VC money of $1.2 million dollars.

In 2008, only after 2 years of starting the company, Dropbox had only 9 employees and 200,000 customers. But this lean mentality allowed them to sail through the economic collapse. By 2010, the number of users jumped tenfold while they only added 2 more employees. Today they have about 70 employees and over 50 million users.

Takeaway: Resist growing too big too fast. Keep salaries low, expenses at a minimum and hire temporary workers to help you stock away cash back into the company. This way you can invest in a solid foundation that can sustain a market meltdown.

Lesson #6: Spend more money staying front and center

The competition surrounding Dropbox is stiff. Not only are big players like Google, Apple, Amazon and Microsoft interested in the cloud storage market, but smaller players are popping up all the time.

Their biggest threat is Apple’s iCloud with its network of millions of people who own iPhones, Macs and iPads. Google is threatening, too, with a rumored product that could be very effective with the 185 million plus Android phones out there.

How is Dropbox going to handle this competition?

They have to spend an enormous amount of money remaining in the public’s eye. Houston is also spending his time inking deals with phone companies to make Dropbox exclusive cloud storage provider. He is also working with PC and television makers to get exclusive deals with them, too.

Takeaway: Work to keep your company in the public’s eye. Use social media, publicity stunts, marketing dollars, partnerships with big brands and good-old advertising.

Conclusion

Odds are you are not likely to be the next Dropbox. But that doesn’t mean you can’t imitate the things the company has done to achieve the sort of success they know today. Because if you do so, it will increase your odds of succeeding.

So what other business lessons can you learn from the rise of Dropbox?

12-Jan-12 1:15 AM

11 Business Lessons Steve Jobs Taught Me

Thu, 06 Oct 2011 20:00:00 GMT

by Neil Patel on October 6, 2011

As you’ve probably already heard, Steve Jobs passed away yesterday. He will be remembered as one of the greatest visionaries ever. What he did for the technological as well as entrepreneurial world, will never be forgotten.

Although I’m young and haven’t been following Steve Jobs’ career as intently as others, he has taught me a lot about business in the last 5 years. Here are 11 things I’ll never forget that Steve Jobs taught me:

People Matter, Not Features

Everything Jobs built made life easier for you. It was rare to ever hear him babbling about features he created, instead he focused on how these products made life easier for others.

For example, the iPhone enabled you to talk on your phone, watch movies, record movies, and listen to music. As simple as that may sound, without an iPhone you may have to had to carry around a cell phone, mp3 player, and a video recorder. Because of him your pockets are much lighter.

He taught myself, along with many others to not focus on just adding features or creating products. First and foremost, you need to focus on solving problems that people are experiencing. If you can do that, you’ll stay ahead of the curve.

There’s Nothing Wrong With Pre-Selling

Most companies launch products and then sell them. Jobs didn’t do that with Apple. He let the public know what he was going to sell them, how it solved their problems, and that they could pre-order the product online.

You can do the same thing. Don’t wait for your product or service to be released. Start selling it now! The money you earn today will help cover your costs and it will help solve any cash flow issues you may encounter during distribution.

Keep it Simple, Silly

I switched from a PC to a Mac because Macs are much easier to use. Or at least they are for my dad and 1-year-old nephew. Every Apple product I bought during Steve’s tenure was simple to use.

He also created cool looking devices, but above all else his products were simple to use. For example, the iPad was the first device I was ever able to give my dad that required little to no instruction. There are no shut down or start options, you just click on applications and start using them.

If you want more applications, you just go to the App Store and download them.

Don’t try to make your solutions complicated. Keep it simple… even if that means you have to strip off the bells and whistles. If you aren’t creating usable solutions, it will be harder to gain traction.

Think BIG!

If you are in business, you are there to make money. If not, you shouldn’t be an entrepreneur. If you are going to create a business, create one that changes the world.

Apple isn’t just a technology company, Steve Jobs changed the world! His products are used all around the world and by everyone. This is why Apple is the largest company in the world.

You won’t be able to create a big company unless you solve big problems. Although you can make a nice living off of conquering a small niche, you wont make billions doing it.

Focus, Focus and Focus Some Morre

When you look at Apple’s website, it seems like they have a lot of products, right? Well, for being a hundred billion dollar company, they actually don’t.

Jobs was smart, he always focused his energy on a few big products instead of trying to create thousands of small ones. In other words, he went for big wins instead of looking to hit singles and doubles.

With your business you shouldn’t try to do multiple things. Just focus your time and energy on one product or service. As long as your core business continues to grow, you shouldn’t do anything else. The moment your growth slows down and flattens, that’s when you should expand.

Create an Ecosystem

I never really understood the power of creating a platform until the iPhone was released. When the phenomenon hit the market and companies started to create applications, Apple grew to have a huge ecosystem.

Not only were they selling their products, other companies started to build products on the Apple platform and their customers were encouraged to buy and use Apple products.

By this point Apple didn’t have to sell their products, other companies were doing it for them.

Steve Jobs created an ecosystem and he was able to do it around Apple products. If you want to grow a brilliant idea, you have to create an ecosystem for that idea to flourish.

There’s Always Room for Innovation

The iPod wasn’t the first mp3 player. There were 100s of others that were already out before Apple released the iPod. That didn’t discourage Jobs from entering the space…he just one upped everyone by creating a better product.

These days if you are looking to buy a music player, the first thing comes to your mind is the iPod, right? And what’s the second brand that comes to your mind?

Ummmmm…

That’s right, they demolished all of their competitors. The only other device that I can think of is the Zune, which kind of sucks.

Don’t be afraid to enter a saturated market… you just have to be willing to stir things up. If you can innovate, you will win. If you decide to create another me too company, expect to be crushed.

Be Passionate

Did you know that Steve Jobs had a salary of $1 a year? That’s right, he didn’t care for money and he stated it publicly. He cared about the company, their products, and changing peoples’ lives.

If you love what you are doing, you are going to work harder and be more likely to succeed. Heck, Jobs even worked hard when he was sick… that’s how much he loved what he was doing.

Don’t just do things for the money, do things because you love what you are doing. You aren’t going to live forever, so enjoy your life while you can.

Never Lose Your Investors Money

Although Steve Jobs wasn’t the CEO throughout all of Apple’s history, he always took care of the company. He came back, and turned the company around. In other words, he grew shareholder money and took care of his investors.

As I stated earlier, Apple is the biggest company in the world! It’s very difficult to create a decent size company without taking money from investors… so make sure you take care of them. And if you do so, they’ll always take care of you.

Another great leader who also has a very similar rule is Warren Buffett. If you can take care of the people who are feeding you, they’ll constantly be willing to reciprocate.

You’re Nothing Without Your Team

Apple has a ton of benefits: from on-site fitness centers to tuition assistance, they even have cafeterias with organic food. Why did they do all of this? To take care of their employees.

A big part of being a good leader is realizing that you have to have a good team. It’s impossible to do everything yourself. If you don’t take care of your employees and show your appreciation, you’ll quickly lose them.

If you take care of your employees they’ll put their blood, sweat and tears into your company.

Don’t Forget About Your Friends and Family

As an entrepreneur when you work so hard for so many years, you tend to forget about your friends and family. All you do is live, sleep and breathe business.

At the end of the day, there is nothing wrong with that, but you also have to spend time with your friends and family. Money will always be there, but your friends and family won’t.

When Steve Jobs got sick, he left Apple to spend his final moments with his friends and family. He knew what was important to him. You too need to figure out what’s important to you no matter how much time your business or job takes from your life, don’t forget about what’s important.

Conclusion

It’s tragic that Steve Jobs passed away during his prime. He was a great entrepreneur and leader. We’ll never forget what he did for this world.

My condolences go out to his family and friends and may he rest in peace.

6-Oct-11 3:00 PM

Earthwormjobs.com Announces the Promotion of Sonya Smeal Hunt and Danielle Bauer

Tue, 04 Oct 2011 20:00:00 GMT

Lincoln, Nebraska, September 4, 2011 – Earthwormjobs.com is proud to name Sonya Smeal Hunt as the President/Executive Director and Danielle Bauer as the Chief Officer of Operations/Treasurer of Earthwormjobs.com. Sonya Smeal Hunt and Danielle Bauer have both been working for/with Earthwormjobs.com since its inception 4 years ago and have been a key part in its success. We feel they are well equipped to handle their new positions.

Founder Jeremy Hunt will continue to be a big part of Earthwormjobs.com as the vice president; however Sonya Smeal Hunt and Danielle Bauer will be taking care of the day- to-day operations.

Earthwormjobs.com specializes in Education and Job Facilitation for the Green Industry. For more information contact Sonya at Sonya@earthwormjobs.comor Danielle at Danielle@earthwormjobs.com

We congratulate Sonya Smeal Hunt and Danielle Bauer and look forward to the prosperous future of Earthwormjobs.com under their guidance.

4-Oct-11 3:00 PM

8 Marketing Ideas to Grow Your Start Up to Mythic Proportions

Tue, 04 Oct 2011 18:00:00 GMT

by Neil Patel on October 3, 2011

Ever wonder what companies like Apple or Nike did to become world-wide icons? Or how they created devoted followers? Their success almost seems like a miracle…

But trust me, it’s not. They’re success can be copied!

Here are 8 ideas that can inspire you to create marketing campaigns that generate tremendous buzz, resonate with people and eventually become a part of your customers’ life.

Idea #1: Place your product in an unexpected marketing channel

Did you know that M&M’s was originally offered the opportunity to appear in the movie E.T.? Yet, for whatever reason, they turned it down. Spielberg then approached Reese’s Pieces who jumped on the chance and their product then became a legend.

If you’re start up has a physical product start thinking about unexpected places you could promote it.

Maybe you know a rock band that’s pretty successful on a regional level and they create popular music videos. Why not ask them if you can get your product into one of their videos?

Another example I saw recently is when the video chat room Chill teamed up with Snoop Dogg to allow people to hang out with the rapper while he shared videos. This was a great way to introduce a different audience to their product.

Idea #2: Use humor

Some of the weirdest commercials out there are the ones by Old Spice. But I also think they’re the funniest. So do tens of millions of people!

Whether it’s the sea captain with a wife who wants to kiss his lips more than normal or Isaiah Mustafa telling ladies that their man could smell like him, these videos on YouTube are a sensation.

How could you come up with ideas for your start-up? A good place to start is by watching a show like “The Funniest Commercials of the Year”.

You could also watch stand-up comics on Netflix or spend some time on a site like Funny or Die. The trick is to pay attention to what is popular.

The nice thing about a site like YouTube is that it makes it cheap to produce a viral commercial because all you have to do is have a video recorder, simple editing software and you are in business.

By the way, you don’t always have to come up with an original idea. Sometimes you can modify a current idea to your product or service like First Round Capital did with the Old Spice ad, which got them press in Mashable and TechCrunch.

Idea #3: Create an unforgettable promotional gimmick

When Lance Armstrong got cancer back in the 1990s, he started the Livestrong Foundation to help raise money for a cancer cure. To help support this foundation he started selling the yellow bands you now see everywhere.

So why did this idea work so well?

The reason this idea took off is because the bands supported a great cause, were fairly inexpensive and simple for people to wear.

The bands also tapped into the deep human emotion of wanting to belong. People who wore the bands and saw other people wearing the bands felt proud of the cause they were supporting together.

Clothing items are probably one of the most popular ways to create a viral promotional gimmick for your start up.

The reason this is true is that people like to express themselves and stand out, so if you have a unique t-shirt with a unique saying on it, people will scramble to get one. And once people start wearing your t-shirt or hat, they then become a walking advertisement for you!

For example, walk around San Francisco long enough and you’re bound to see someone wearing a t-shirt from the online company Zaarly.

Idea #4: Communicate to your customers in unexpected ways

The Goodyear Blimp is a great example of a company who has become so much a part of our lives because of the clever way they advertise. You get excited when you see the blimp and want to tell your friends or children right away.

If you want to create a clever and unexpected way to communicate with your costumers, try thinking about things that stand out and fascinate people.

One way the Yellow Cab Pizza Co. grew its business was buy delivering pizzas on mopeds painted yellow and black like a cab. If you’ve ever seen one, you know how much they stand out.

Maybe you can’t afford a fleet of yellow and black mopeds. Then try blogging in a unique way. That’s what two amateur chefs did when they opened their Manhattan store The Brooklyn Kitchen.

The pair focuses their blog on providing useful and targeted information to their readers, which include videos on how to saber a champagne bottle or shuck an oyster.

Idea #5: Keep it simple

Sometimes the best ideas are so simple, like the Nike swoosh. That little curled check mark was designed in 1971 and to this day people all across the world recognize it.

Google’s search engine interface is another example of simplicity becoming legendary.

When Page and Brin started the company one of their ideas was to keep the home page free of just about anything except the search box. This immediately stood out to people because other search engine homes pages were cluttered.

In fact, in the early days there was a Google user who kept a daily count of the character count on the home page and would email the company to complain if it got to high.

It doesn’t matter if your product is complex or you provide a complicated service. You can still keep your logo or message simple, like the social media productivity tool TaskRabbit did.

Idea #6: Go to the media your audiences is using

A partnership with MySpace helped the movie High School Musical get the attention and buzz it needed to make it big. This made sense because a lot of high schoolers were spending time on MySpace.

Do you know where your customers are spending most of their time? Is it on Facebook? Or at the movies?

Don’t know where your customer is spending his or her time? Here’s a few simple ways to find out:

Ask your target customer – pick up the phone and call a few friends or family who you think might be interested in your product.
Create a survey – this is really easy to do online with tools like SurveyMonkey or KISSinsights.
Research – Companies like eMarketer, Forresters and Neilson provide excellent research data on people’s media habits.

Idea #7: Look for slogans that will last

You probably have heard of the catchphrase “Where’s the Beef?” Did you know that it started as an advertising slogan in 1984 for a Wendy’s commercial with a little grandmother demanding a big burger?

It even got so popular that 1984 presidential candidates Gary Hart and Walter Mondale used it against each other during their debates.

So what makes a good slogan? A good slogan isn’t just a neat saying, motto, elevator pitch or your mission statement summarized in four or five words.

Instead, a good slogan shows your customers how you are positioned against your competitors. Your slogan is communicating your value to the world, and you have to say it quickly.

To give you another idea of how this works, here’s Blendtec’s slogan, “The world’s most powerful blenders make the best smoothies!”

But the slogan alone won’t get the job of getting attention done. You have to be creative with how you deliver your value proposition.

Idea #8: Use tools creatively to spread the word

Let’s look at Blendtec again. When company founder Tom Dickinson dropped an iPhone into one of his blenders and put it online, the video became famous on YouTube.

That single video started an entire series of now famous episodes of Tom dropping all sorts of items into his blenders.

What this taught his customers was how much more powerful his blender was than his competitors. And he did it in a simple way that didn’t cost a lot of money.

What can you do to teach your customers how you are different than your competitors? The company Common Craft did it by explaining difficult or strange concepts with white boards, cut outs and video.

The photo app Instagram did it by allowing users to share their photos on just about every social media tool. Each time you share a photo it’s an advertisement for Instagram.

Conclusion

It’s usually not just one single factor that will create a devoted following for a product or make a company a world-wide phenomenon. Most often it’s a combination of all of the above.

4-Oct-11 1:00 PM

7 Sneaky Ways to Turn Your Startup Into a Real Business

Tue, 04 Oct 2011 18:00:00 GMT

by Neil Patel on September 29, 2011

Isn’t running a startup fun? Well it is for a while, but unless you can figure out a way to make money you wont last very long.

Whether you are venture funded or you’ve bootstrapped your company, you have to figure out how to turn your startup into a real business. Although it my seem inconceivable, it’s not impossible.

Here are 7 tactics that will help turn your startup into a real company:

Never climb the corporate ladder

If you are trying to turn your startup into a real business, you need to increase your revenue. The best way to get money into your startup is to convince large companies to pay you as they are typically sitting on piles of cash.

Whether you know someone at these Fortune 500 companies or not, you can get in the door and make a sale. Here’s what you need to do.

Go through this list and see which companies you can sell your product or service to.
Once you have determined who would be a good fit, look up who the CEO of that company is and Google their name with the word “email” in it so you can find their email address.
After you have their email and name, shoot them an email that goes something like this: “Hey John, I know you are busy, but if you could forward this email to your VP of marketing that would be great. I have a few ideas on how you could be making a lot more money.” The goal of this email is to get in touch with the decision maker of the department you are trying to reach.

Although you’ll rarely get a reply from the CEO of these large companies, I found that well over 20% of the time they’ll forward your email to the person you are trying to reach. And when doing so, you’ll get a call or an email from that person who will hear what you have to say because when the CEO forwards him your email, he will assume that you know the CEO.

If he or she assumes that you know the CEO, there is a much higher chance that you’ll close a deal. The funny thing about this is that the person you are talking to will rarely ever ask you if you actually know the CEO.

Make competitors fight for you

When you are pitching a deal to a company it’s hard to close it because you want their money more than they want to pay you. So you have to figure out a way to turn the table.

The best way to do this is to pitch to that company’s competition at the same time. This way they’ll have to fight for you and you can give them a spiel about how you are only going to work with one company in that industry.

For example, if you were pitching both Sam’s Club and Costco you could tell each company that their competition is interested in working with you. This will cause both companies to get defensive and actually spend the time to look at what you are offering. Plus it will make them move a lot faster.

For this to work all you have to do is shoot an email over to someone who works for the competition and pitch them on what you have to offer. The person you talk to doesn’t have to be a decision maker; you just have to find someone to talk to. You don’t want to lie when you tell a company that “you are talking to their competition” so make sure you actually talk to someone at the other company.

Create a sense of urgency

As I have mentioned in previous blog posts you have to convince companies to move quick. Whether it is a business development deal, sales deal, or just getting a publisher to write on you, you have to get everyone to move faster.

The easiest way to get someone to move quick is to give them a solid deadline. For example if you are trying to create a business partnership with another company, let them know that you need an answer by X date. Of if you are trying to get press from an online magazine, let them know that they have to publish information about your company by X date as that is when you are launching Y feature.

When you feel no sense of urgency, what do you? You take your time, right? Well that’s what happens when you approach other people. Especially if they are busy, they definitely will move slowly. So to solve this you need to create a sense of urgency.

Convince bloggers to blog

Convincing bloggers to blog isn’t hard, but convincing them to blog about your company is. The more of them you can convince the more links you’ll get. And as you already know those links will drive referring traffic as well as help boost your search engine rankings.

The best way to convince a blogger to blog about your company is to build a relationship with them. You can do this through an email conversation. You first email should look something like this:

Hey Neil,

I have to say, I’m a huge fun. I love Quick Sprout and how you write great information on business and marketing.

I know you are a busy guy, so I’ll make it short. I just recommend that you write a blog post on “advanced SEO tactics” as I feel it will benefit your readers.

Have a great day!

After you send you first email, wait for a response back. If you don’t get one within a few days, move on and email the next blogger. If you do get a response, build up the relationship by commenting on their blog and even shooting them an email with some more ideas on how they can improve their content, blog design, or anything else that you can think of.

Finally after a few back and forth emails, you should shoot them an email like this:

Hey Neil,

When you get a quick moment I would love to get your feedback on my website, kissmetrics.com, as it would really mean a lot to me. And if you like it, feel free and share it with your blog readers.

By the way, if there is anything I can do for you, don’t hesitate to ask.

Hope the weather’s nice in sunny Orange County, it’s raining here in Seattle.

Sincerely,
Bob

Don’t list prices on your website

Who says you have to have standardized pricing? Don’t get me wrong having pricing on your website makes things simple, but if you are selling big ticket stuff with high margins, it’s typically best if you don’t mention prices.

I’ve found that the best price to pitch a customer on is the highest one they can afford. You usually can find this out by asking them “what’s your budget”. Sometimes they won’t have one, but if you ask them for a budget range they should have something.

Once you figure it out you can come up with a price that you want to pitch them on. Just make sure that you can offer them a low cost solution or product if you get some push back on the price. This way you won’t lose the deal if they decide they are looking to spend less.

Follow your competitor’s followers

The chances are, your competition is on Twitter. Whether it’s the people that work at that company or the company itself, someone within the organization uses Twitter.

One way to reach more potential customers is to see who is following your competition and follow them. Because if they are following your competition, they would probably also be interested in what you have to offer.

Once you start following them you’ll notice that 20 to 30% should start following you back, assuming that you are tweeting good content. After you have some relevant followers every once in a while you can tweet about your company and what you have to offer. This will increase you’re chances of taking customers away from your competition.

And if you are too lazy to do this manually, you can always use one of these tools to help speed up the process.

The best recommendations are 3rd party recommendations

If you want to move up stream and land larger deals, have your customers get them for you. One thing that I always offer my current customers, which I find very effective, is a promise that if they help me land a much larger deal… I’ll give them my product or services for free.

For example if someone pays you $5,000 a month you won’t make that much off the deal compared to a deal worth $100,000 a month for the same product or service. Believe me, people will pay a lot more money for the same thing if they are a big company.

So if your $5000 customer tells their friend who works at a big company how you are great and how they have to hire your company, there is a good chance you’ll get the deal. The reason being: you aren’t pitching, you now have a 3rd party screaming at the top of their lungs about how great you are.

Keep on moving up stream and have your customers pitch your products and services for you. It is a good way to grow. This is especially effective if your current customers have graduated from a top MBA school like Harvard. They’ll typically be connected with other powerful executives.

Conclusion

Who says you have to be a startup forever? Isn’t your goal to make more money and create a “real business”? Well if you use the sneaky tactics I mentioned above, you’ll start seeing your revenue go up and you’ll be on your way to creating a legitimate business.

4-Oct-11 1:00 PM

6 Reasons You Won’t Succeed

Wed, 21 Sep 2011 21:00:00 GMT

by Neil Patel on June 20, 2011

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Every week I constantly come across people who want to follow my entrepreneurial footsteps. Although I don’t think I have accomplished much for my age, I am always open to helping other people out.

But one thing that I have been realizing is that most of you won’t succeed because you just don’t have your head screwed on tight enough.

Here is why I think you won’t succeed:

Reality Check #1: Learn how to manage money

I recently hung out with a few young adults who are looking to grow their career. They are sharp, smart, and hard working. The problem is they don’t know how to manage their money. They’ve maxed out their credit cards and don’t have much money in their bank accounts, yet they’ll spend $150 on luxuries services.

If luxury services make you happy, by all means get them. But you shouldn’t be spending money on things like that when you have large amounts of debt. I personally didn’t indulge in luxury items until I was making over 6 figures in income.

Now I am not trying to tell you what you should or shouldn’t do with your money because at the end of the day it is your life and you should do whatever will make you happy. But if you want to succeed in business you need to learn how to manage money. If you can’t pay your bills on time, pay employees or learn how to collect checks you’ll run into a lot of cash issues. Without money you won’t be in business for long.

Reality Check #2: Don’t take opportunities for granted

Just last month I got a hair cut from a great hair stylist who seems to have more clients than she can deal with it. She wanted to expand her business and open up a decent size salon. So I offered to meet up with her and potentially invest in her idea if she could come up with a plan that made sense.

To make a long story short, I met up with her and she came unprepared. In addition to that I offered her a second chance by telling her to get back to me with a plan, but I still haven’t heard anything from her…

If she didn’t take the opportunity for granted she probably would have had the money she wanted to create the salon of her dreams. I already knew she was a good hair stylist from my friends and I knew that she would have clients as she already has more than she can deal with.

No matter whom you meet or what people offer you, don’t ever take things for granted. You never know who can help you out and what they can do for you.

Reality Check #3: Ideas are a dime a dozen

Every week I literally get a handful of people who want feedback on their business idea. These are ideas that people are passionate about, but they never execute.

For example, 6 months ago I had a gentlemen come to me who wanted to create a cloud based storage service for people who watch pornographic content. Think of it as a Dropbox, but for porn.

Although the idea sounded great, he never did anything with it. If you want to succeed, you have to execute. Things like ideas don’t matter, execution does. This is the reason why companies like Facebook, Twitter and Groupon are doing so well because they are able to execute.

Don’t waste your time telling hundreds of people your business ideas, just get out there and do it.

Reality Check #4: Communicate, communicate, and communicate some more

My generation loves to text message and use Facebook. But what they suck at compared to the other generations is responding to emails and answering phone calls.

In my experience the number one reason people miss out on an opportunity is because they are horrible at communicating. And more importantly they are horrible at communicating through the normal channels most business folks are used to… email and phone.

Make sure you are on top of things and you respond to people in a timely fashion. It will make you look great and it will help you keep your clients happy.

Reality Check #5: Emotions and business don’t mix

If you know me, you know that I am not an emotional person. Most things are either black or white to me and I always do what is best for my business even if it hurts “feelings.”

For the past few months I have been hanging out with people who are my age. I’ve realize they have a lot of unchecked emotions and drama in their lives. This in turn has made me more emotional which has started to effect my business decisions. I have started to slowly cut these emotion filled people out of my life.

If you want to succeed in the business world you have to learn how to make decisions based off of logic and not emotion. It’s not always going to be easy, but it’s what you have to do to make wise decisions. If for some reason you aren’t able to think straight: don’t make any decisions. Sleep on your emotions until you have a logical answer or get some guidance from a peer.

Reality Check #6: F may come before W, but Work comes before Fun

Who doesn’t want to have fun? right? I know I do, but you need to learn to only have fun after all of your work is done. For example I haven’t taken a vacation in 10 years because I need to continually work on my start-up.

Don’t get me wrong, I have fun, but I always put work ahead of having fun. It sounds easy when you are making a decent chunk of change, but at the beginning it ends up being a bit difficult because you won’t be making heaps of cash.

If you can learn to put work ahead of having fun, you’ll do well in life… especially if you are a hard worker. You just have to be patient as you won’t see the benefits of this in the short run.

Conclusion

Just because I’ve stated why you won’t succeed it doesn’t mean you can’t change. Everyone, including me, has flaws. Don’t get depressed or feel hopeless, do something about it!

If you are wiling to change you can succeed. You just have to learn how to spot the roadblocks in your life and solve them. And if for some reasonyou aren’t able to solve them, don’t be afraid to get help from others.

I hope you can prove me wrong! If you need help or guidance in business, don’t be afraid to leave a comment and ask for help. I promise that I’ll do my best to help you out.

21-Sep-11 4:00 PM

You’re the reason why you don’t have a job

Wed, 21 Sep 2011 21:00:00 GMT

by Neil Patel on January 12, 2011

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Over the past few months, I have had a lot of job openings. These positions have been for various jobs, all the way from personal assistants to inside sales representatives.

During my short experience hunting for qualified candidates, I have learned one really important thing about you… the only reason why you don’t have a job is because of you… so get out of your own way!

If your jaw didn’t drop, well maybe it will after you read this:

Create a good resume

When you’re submitting your resume, make sure it is short and to the point. You would be amazed at how many 5-page resumes I got when I posted an ad for a personal assistant on Monster.com.

Look, I understand that for some of you with a ton of work experience it’s hard to fit everything in 1 page, but ideally your goal should be to have no more than a maximum of 2. You see, when an employer has to read more than 2 pages, they think you’re trying too hard. Not only are you coming across as desperate, but it kind of brings the question as to why you’ve never been able to keep a stable job.

The other thing to keep in mind before submitting a resume is to check for grammar and spelling errors. Small mistakes like that show potential employers that you won’t be thorough with your work, which is a huge turn off.

Be personal

I hate it when someone submits a job application and all they say is:

To Whom It May Concern:
Attached is my resume. I look forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely,
Jennifer

Do you think I am really going to respond back to Jennifer? No way. If she couldn’t spend 1 minute trying to personalize her resume for me, how can I trust her to deal with my customers. Show some enthusiasm, talk a bit about yourself and why you would be a good candidate for the job. A simple cover letter can go a long way.

You have to sell yourself, but don’t go over board. If you’ve been blessed with good looks, don’t include sexy pictures of yourself. And yes, this has happened to me numerous times. It’s simply degrading! I am not going to hire someone based on their looks, I am looking to hire people that can make me more money.

Do your homework

If you know that I am looking for a developer, make sure you do a bit of research on my company and the requirements for my job opening. Your resume should be tailored to my opening and not all of your skill sets.

Last week I got hit by someone who said they were an excellent developer and they wanted to work for KISSmetrics. I told them to email support@kissmetrics.com with their resume because we are always looking for talented developers to join our team.

But once the KISSmetrics team looked at the resume, we noticed that it was tailored more around how that person was a great marketer instead of a great developer.

So when you apply for jobs, make sure that you pitch yourself for the job opening and not stuff that the company is looking for. Typically, no one is looking for a jack-of-all-trades because we know it doesn’t exist.

Be on time

If you did everything else right and you get an in person interview, make sure you are on time. You would be surprised at the number of people who blew me off once they had already agreed to the time. They were either late or they just didn’t show up.

Time is money and a potential employer wont hire you if you can’t come on time.

If you happen to have an emergency and can’t make it, call and email the employer letting them know that you can’t make it and why. The chances of you not getting the job will probably increase, but at least you won’t look like a big flake.

Don’t lie

The biggest mistake you can make is to lie during an interview. You should assume that your future boss isn’t dumb because he or she must have done something right to get to that position. So if you lie, they will catch you.

Tell the truth, even if it can hurt you. It’s human nature to try and make yourself look the best you can, so when someone asks if you can do something, be honest. Worse case, just say you can’t, but you are willing to learn.

If you get caught in a lie I’ll guarantee that you won’t be hired. If you made it this far, don’t blow it by telling a small lie.

Follow up

I have had a good amount of candidates that are perfect for my job openings. They went through all of the steps correctly, but they forgot to do one really important thing… follow up.

If I tell you that you are hired, then make sure you get back to me. You’ll be amazed at how many people just left the face of the earth after I agreed to hire them. When I finally figure out why, it wasn’t because they didn’t like my company or found a better position, it’s because their personal life distracted them.

Get your priorities straight. If you can’t, the least you can do is to let the employer know that you can’t work for them, instead of leaving them hanging. It’s just common courtesy.

Conclusion

I know, the economy is bad and you can’t find a job, right? Stop blaming the economy because there are a ton of job openings, you just have to look for them. Most of the people I know who own companies, including me, are all hiring. The hardest thing that we are experiencing is that we can’t find people who are hungry, scrappy, and smart.

If you think you are a hungry, scrappy, and smart here is the best way you can get a job:

Leverage your network – companies are more likely to hire people that are referred to them. We hate wasting time on bad hires, so we rather reduce our risk and go with a recommendation.
Don’t wait for an opening – the biggest mistake you can make is to only apply to companies that have job openings. If you really feel you can help a company grow and you see how they are making mistakes, hit them up and tell them all the things they need to fix. You will be surprised at how many companies will hire you when you do that. You will probably even get paid more.
Don’t be shy – what’s best for the company is typically what’s best for you. Don’t beat around the bush when you are in an interview, you’re more likely to get a job if you are upfront and you just tell things how they are. Don’t make that mistake by telling me what I want to hear instead of what’s best for my business.

21-Sep-11 4:00 PM

6 Ways to Supercharge Your Business

Wed, 21 Sep 2011 20:00:00 GMT

by Neil Patel on August 10, 2011

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Over the past 10 years I’ve created many businesses; some have lost a lot of money, others made a lot of money, and a few have made TONS of money. Do you know the number 1 reason why some of my businesses did well while others didn’t? It wasn’t luck… it was experience.

If you looked at my entrepreneurial life on a timeline you would see that my first few businesses did really poorly, however, as the years went on I slowly made more money. The reason is because I’ve learned what mistakes to avoid and how to supercharge my business so that I can make money faster.

Here are the 6 tactics that will supercharge your business and take it to the next level.

Tactic #1: Hold weekly team meetings

Do you hate how unproductive team meetings are? Don’t worry, I’ve figured out how to make them productive. Every Monday morning I have a meeting with my team to figure out one thing we could do to increase our revenue. Then we determine that within 24 hours it has to be implemented. And every Friday we have another meeting to discuss the results.

Here is what you should be doing during your Monday meeting:

Come up with a problem with your team that is causing your revenue or profit to not be as high as it could be.
Come up with all the possible solutions that can be implemented within a day or two.
Pick the most popular solution and one that the team is confident on.
Assign team members to implement the solution so that it gets up within a day.

Here is what you should discuss during your Friday meeting:

Did your solution cause the outcome that the team was expecting?
If it did, start thinking about what you want to discuss during the Monday meeting.
If it didn’t, go through why the results weren’t favorable and what everyone learned.

The goal of your weekly meetings is to get your team on board to making the business more money in a way that allows everyone to see results.

Tactic #2: Make everyone accountable

You shouldn’t be a fan of micromanaging. You should be hiring people who are smarter than you are. This way you don’t have to track silly things like when team members arrive and leave the office.

But the one thing everyone should track is progress. In my company we have a system called “KISSfocus” where everyone lists out what they currently are working on. This way everyone is familiar with what others are working on… including their boss.

If someone isn’t working the other team members can easily track inefficiency. This works out really well because it causes everyone to be more efficient… especially executives.

Tactic #3: Connect with your customers

One of the best ways to make your customers loyal is to create a bond with them. Whether it’s being transparent, telling your story, or just simply caring for your customers you need to connect with them.

Here are a few ways I have connected with you:

On Quick Sprout I told you my life story and I respond to every comment you leave.
On Twitter I respond to the almost every question someone asks me.
On KISSmetrics we go above and beyond to make each potential customer happy by doing things like helping them implement our software for free when we typically charge a setup fee.
On Crazy Egg we always do what’s best for you even if it doesn’t make sense. For example we have given people refunds for 6 months worth of services when they weren’t happy even though they got benefit from it.

There are a lot of ways you can connect with customers or potential customers. The key to this is to not just care about your business, but more importantly care for the people using your products or services. This is the number 1 reason why I am able to go back to the same companies I worked with 10 years ago and pitch them on services offered by my new company.

Tactic #4: Don’t chase your customers, let them come to you

I’ve never been a fan of cold calling or using other similar tactics to increase sales. I am a big believer that if someone wants my product or service they’ll come to me.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t expect to make millions of dollars by just having a good product or service. However, I believe that if I educate the market, people will buy my products.

The best way to educate the market is through blogging. Every company blog that I have created has been able to hit at least 100,000 visitors a month within a few months after inception.

Here is how I get customers to come to me:

Setup a company blog – the blog needs to have a simple design and it can’t just promote your products or services. The design should focus on making the content easily accessible and readable.
Write great content – you probably don’t have the time to blog, but if you post an ad on the Problogger Job Board you should be able to find a few bloggers who will write great content for you for only $30 a blog post. The key to creating good blog posts is to have your writers write on information that will benefit your potential customers. Don’t just blog on your company and the products or services you offer.
Leverage social media – build up your Twitter and Facebook accounts. These are the two easiest social media channels you can use to promote your blog. In addition to this your writers should be promoting the content they are writing. And if you are looking to get even more social media traffic, you can always pay a marketing firm to generate traffic.
Respond to comments – no one likes being ignored, so make sure you talk to every potential customer. Whether it is a comment on your blog or tweet to you, make sure you are responding. It’s a great way to get people to come back and want to check out what your company has to offer without you telling them to do so.

It shouldn’t take more than 3 to 6 months to create a somewhat popular blog if you do it right. And the best benefit from doing so is that you will have thousands of extra people coming to your website each month who will check out your products and services. Plus in the long run it’s much cheaper to do this than it is to pay an army of cold callers.

Tactic #5: Turn your weaknesses into strengths

Every business has weaknesses. I don’t care if you are Apple, Google, Microsoft, or even much smaller company like mine. Instead of worrying about your weaknesses and trying to hide them, focus on turning them into strengths.

For example, my first successful company provided Internet marketing services to small and large companies. We ran into a couple of problems. At the time we didn’t have a long track record like most of the firms because we were new and we were a lot smaller so big companies were afraid that we didn’t have the bandwidth to take them on.

Instead of trying to hide these weaknesses, I turned them into strengths. When companies said we were too small, I said we were actually the perfect size. Small enough where we didn’t have large overhead like bigger firms so we could offer the same services for much less

And when they asked why they should choose us instead of the larger Internet marketing companies with a great track record, the first thing I did was go to Monster.com and Craigslist to show them the job openings these big companies listed. When they saw how a recent college graduate who was getting paid very little a year was going to manage their multimillion dollar campaign instead of an experienced marketer like me, they shied away from the big companies.

It will take you some time to figure out how to turn your weaknesses into strengths, but it’s possible. You just have to be creative. And every time you find that you aren’t able to convince a customer to go with you ask them what you could have done to win their business.

Tactic #6: Keep it simple stupid

My current company is named “KISSmetrics” for a reason. I quickly learned that simple companies with easy products and services tend to win. Hulu beat Joost because they created a much better user experience. People don’t want to upgrade to the latest Skype client because the old one is just easier to use.

You have to keep things simple. Life is already complicated, so why make it more difficult? Don’t try to make your company look cool by using the geekiest terminology out there, dumb things down and make sure a 5 year old can understand what you are doing.

The best way you can figure out how to make things simpler for your customers is to survey them and run A/B tests to see which versions of your website or product are simpler for your customer.

And like I said earlier, the key to this is to dumb things down. People don’t need bells and whistles, they need simple products or services that solve problems.

Conclusion

Just because you aren’t an experienced entrepreneur, doesn’t mean you can’t create a big business. With the 6 tactics I mentioned above you should be able to supercharge your business.

Try them out and let me know what you think. Even as a experienced entrepreneur, I myself am learning new things everyday and can still learn from others like you.

21-Sep-11 3:00 PM

21 Big Marketing Ideas for Small Marketing Budgets

Wed, 21 Sep 2011 20:00:00 GMT

by Neil Patel on September 8, 2011

87Share

Are you trying to market your company online? Well, who isn’t? But do you know how to market your company online without spending too much money?

If you don’t have a lot of cash and you are trying to market your company online, don’t worry, as companies have been able to succeed without spending much money on marketing. To prove it, not only will I share 21 big marketing ideas that don’t cost too much money, but also I’ll also give you examples of companies who have succeeded using each tactic.

Big marketing idea #1: Comment on blogs

A great way to get your website popular is to comment on other blogs. For this to work you have to leave comments on blogs that are related to your website and the comments you leave have to be insightful.

If people feel that your comments are detailed and insightful not only will they keep on reading your comments, typically they’ll also head over to your website (when you leave a comment on a blog, they typically ask for your website URL).

Although this tactic seems simple, it is very effective. Just look at Mashable, Pete Cashmore made that blog popular by commenting on competing blogs like TechCrunch when he first launched it. He literally left hundreds of comments and now he has one of the most popular websites on the Internet.

Big marketing idea #2: Leverage message boards

Message boards may sound boring and dull because they’ve been around for years, but they are still effective. There are millions of message boards on the Internet and there is one for almost every topic.

If you can leave messages on popular boards like Yahoo Message Boards and give people good advice, it can drive a lot of traffic to your website.

Timothy Sykes is notoriously known for this and that’s how he made his website popular. Through message boards he is able to drive over 5000 visitors to his site each month and this has lead him to create an online business that generates over $150,000 a month in revenue.

Big marketing idea #3: Optimize your website for search engines

Google is the most popular website on the Internet, so why wouldn’t you leverage it? Through search engine optimization you can rank higher on Google so you can get more visitors to your website.

One way of doing this is to pay a marketing firm, but as you know that can be costly. Another way of doing SEO is to learn it yourself. By reading the Beginner’s Guide to SEO and by following these link building tactics you should be able to rank higher on the search engines.

A few companies that have leveraged SEO fairly well are About.com, Wikipedia, Craigslist, Amazon, and Zappos. And an example of a smaller company that has done this is Bargaineering, which was acquired by Bankrate for 2.8 million.

Big marketing idea #4: Start a blog

It doesn’t matter what kind of business you are running, you can still have a blog. With my startup KISSmetrics, our blog accounts for over 70% of our monthly traffic. That traffic is then converting into leads for our sales department to follow up on and then close into customers.

If you are going to create a blog for your company, you should do the following:

Host the blog on your domain name (blog.domain.com or domain.com/blog)
Write good content, and don’t constantly pitch your company in your posts.
Create a community by responding to each blog comment.

Big marketing idea #5: Google local

Search is becoming more and more personalized. When you perform a search on Google, you’ll start noticing that the results are becoming tailored to your location. Because of this I decided to claim the Hyatt Hotel in Seattle (I live there) as my business location.

So when you search for the Hyatt Hotel in Seattle, my business comes up. And although this may sound foolish, it’s actually lead to one enterprise customer for my company. $120,000 isn’t too shabby for claiming a location.

Now by no means am I saying that you should claim random locations on localized search, but you should claim at least your office or wherever you operate your business from.

Big mig marketing idea #6: Leverage Social Networks

From Facebook, to Twitter, to Google Plus, they are all popular sites that you should be leveraging. Create profiles on each of those sites as they are a good source of traffic and they’ll create new opportunities for you to find customers.

We’ve built up our profiles on all of the major social sites for KISSmetrics and now social sites account for over 30% of our monthly traffic. The best part about this is that it didn’t cost us a dime… other than the time we’ve spent.

By sharing good content that you find while surfing the web and participating on the social web, you’ll quickly be able to build up your profiles. The key is to be patient as it can take 6 months to a year before your social profiles really become popular.

Big marketing idea #7: Become a guest author

An easy way to get your company out there is to write guest blog posts on other blogs. From TechCrunch to Huffington Post, there are thousands of popular blogs on the Internet. And the one thing all of these blogs want is more content.

If you write guest blog posts on other blogs not only will you get traffic and more branding, but you’ll also get links which will help your SEO efforts.

If you are looking to find places to guest blog you can check out My Blog Guest or you can manually hit up popular blogs in your field.

One company that leverages this tactic is GRP, which is a venture capital firm out of LA. Mark Suster, one of the partners at the firm, is known for guest blogging on sites like TechCrunch on a regular basis. By doing this GRP is getting their name out there and it is helping them get more deal flow.

Big marketing idea #8: Case Studies

If you already have happy customers, why not get a case study from them? Get them to talk about your product or service, how they used it, and the results they got.

Case studies can help build credibility for your company, and get you new customers. One company that is notoriously known for creating case studies is Conversion Rate Experts, and through them they have been able to lock in a handful of customers.

Off the top of my head I can list a handful of companies that have signed up with them because of their case studies. And these companies are spending a high 5 figures, if not 6 figures a year with Conversion Rate Experts.

Big marketing idea #9: Write Beginner’s Guides

Do you remember when companies used to write White Papers? Although they are still effective, the new version of them are “beginner’s guides”. These guides vary in length, but the one thing they have in common is that they are thorough.

By writing good content and giving it away for free, not only will you get a ton of traffic, but you’ll also get a lot of links.

A good example of this is SEOmoz. They wrote the Beginner’s Guide to SEO, which has lead to a lot of business for them. That guide ranks high for “search engine optimization” on Google and then from their they upsell visitors into their software service which starts at $99 a month.

Big marketing idea #10: Speak at conferences

With my first company, ACS, we got over 80% of our new customers from conferences. We constantly spoke at Internet marketing events and convinced companies to pay us thousands of dollars per year.

I spoke at so many conferences in a given year that during my peak, the company spent $108,402 in one year on flights and hotels for me because of all the conferences I was attending. And although that may sound like a lot of money, some of the companies I was able to bring in from these speaking engagements were paying us up to 1.2 million dollars a year.

Now granted, you don’t have to spend much money to speak because there should be enough events to speak at in your local region. All you have to do is find these events and apply to speak.

Big marketing idea #11: Start an affiliate program

If you don’t have the money to spend on marketing, you can always get people to market for you for free. The only thing you have to do is pay people for each sale they bring to you. Think of it as performance based marketing.

Through companies like Hasoffers, you can easily setup affiliate programs and start getting people to market your products or services without spending much money.

Remember how Timothy Sykes leverages messages boards? Well he also leverages affiliate programs. He’s let marketers create mini websites that both praise and bash him, which leads to around $13,000 worth of monthly sales for him.

Big marketing idea #12: Answer questions

From forums to question and answer sites, people need help. If you can answer questions related to the products and services your company provides, you can get new customers. You can find these potential customers on forums on question and answer sites like Yahoo Answers.

One company that uses this tactic on a daily basis is Single Grain. Every day they go through marketing forums and help out 10 companies with free marketing advice. What they’ve found out is that 3% of the companies they help for free offer them money for consulting services.

Big marketing idea #13: Go to networking events

If you can’t be a speaker at a conference, it doesn’t you shouldn’t attend them. Everyday there is a new event going on, you just have to find relevant ones to attend. Sooner or later you’ll realize that people go to these events to meet other people.

Some of the people you will meet will be useless, but a small percentage of the people you meet will turn into business relationships and friendships.

A few years ago I was attending a BarCamp in Santa Monica and I met a guy by the name of Francisco Dao. After a few encountering’s with him we both thought it would be a good idea if he ran a conference series that I co-own. If you fast-forward to today, he has now made me hundreds of thousands of dollars and he is doing so well that he now owns his own conference company.

You’ll be shocked on what you can get out of an event, so make sure you start networking on a regular basis.

Big marketing idea #14: Talk shit

The good part about having a blog is that it gives you an audience that you can communicate with. And when you tell them something, it will start spreading virally on the web.

With my first company ACS, we provided marketing services. And when I saw companies that could use our help, I wouldn’t just reach out to them, but I would write a blog post on how they are messing up.

In 2006, I wrote a blog post on Like.com and how they were messing up with their marketing efforts. Quickly after writing the blog post I got a call from the CEO who then hired me for a consulting engagement. After I realized how effective this strategy was, I also did it with Yahoo and a few other big companies.

Every time I did it, I’ve had over a 50% close ratio.

Big marketing idea #15: Give away the farm

Talking shit about a company on a blog is one way to get new customers, but another way is to give away the farm. Similar to the strategy above, I used to also email companies and tell them in a step by step format of everything they need to change on their website to get more traffic.

Many of the companies I emailed didn’t respond back or hire me, but none-the-less the strategy was effective. Through it I was able to lock in companies like TechCrunch and do all of their online marketing.

And by helping popular brands like TechCrunch, I was able to leverage their name to get more customers.

Don’t be afraid to email companies and potential customers that you think you can help. What’s the worst thing that they can do… ignore your email?

Big marketing idea #16: Ask for referrals

Do you already have customers? If so, have you asked them for referrals? It’s a pretty effective approach as long as your current customers are happy with you.

Look up your current customers on social sites like LinkedIn and see who they’re connected with. If you think someone they know can benefit from your product or service, ask for an introduction.

You’ll be shocked, only a very small percentage of your customers will not be willing to make an introduction. If a large portion tell you no, it means that you could be doing a better job making them happy.

One company that has gotten 5 or 6 referrals from me is Digital Telepathy. They provided one of my companies, Crazy Egg, with a new design. After they did a good job they asked if I knew of any other companies that would be interested in their web design services and I was gladly willing to make introductions for them.

Big marketing idea #17: Leverage Youtube

Not only do videos now appear in search results, but you also can use them to show how good your products actually are. Blendtec has done this for years and it’s been effective. They don’t just claim that their blenders are powerful, but they also show you by blending things like bricks, iphones, and other cool devices.

Some of their videos have gotten over 3 million views and more importantly they have been able to sell thousands of blenders because of these videos.

If you can come up with something creative like blending iPhones, you can create viral videos. Good content spreads like a wildfire over the web, and even on television. The Blendtec guys have been on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno.

Big marketing idea #18: Offer steep discounts

Groupon and Living Social are able to drive thousands of sales for any product or service… assuming you give a really good deal.

Earlier this year, a buddy of mine launched a concept called Tomato Battle, in which thousands of people get together and throw tomatoes at each other. When he launched the event he was charging 59 dollars for a ticket and his goal was to get a bit more than 2000 attendees.

In order to fill up the event, he reached out to Groupon and Living Social and they promoted the event to their email lists at a price point that was around 50% off. Within days he sold over 1000 tickets on these group buying sites and after the deal closed the people who bought tickets told their friends and those friends went directly to the Tomato Battle site and bought more tickets at the regular price.

If you can come up with a price point that benefits you as well as the group buying companies, you can make a lot of money and gain access to a whole new set of customers.

Big marketing idea #19: Have exceptionally great customer service

One of the easiest ways to increase the lifetime value of your customers is to offer exceptionally great customer service. For example, Zappos will automatically upgrade your shipping to next day air every once in a while. And they also offer a 1 year return policy with little to no questions asked.

By providing exceptionally great customer service, customers will not only be happy with you, but they’ll continue to come back. In the short run this may end up costing your company a bit more money, but in the long run you’ll see the benefit because each customer will not only spend more money with you, but they’ll tell their friends about the great experience they had with your company.

Big marketing idea #20: Get press

The more people that talk about your company in a positive way, the more people will come to your website and check out what you are offering. The hard part about press is that it’s not easy to get the attention of the major news outlets.

But it is easy to get the attention of blogs. One way that I like to get press is to email bloggers asking if they would like to interview me. Although that sounds silly, a small percentage of the bloggers you email will say yes.

For example, Search Engine Journal interviewed me, and they did so because I emailed them asking if they would be interested. They said yes, they sent over some questions, I answered them, and emailed them back. Within days the interview was published and it drove a handful of customers to KISSmetrics.

Don’t be shy; ask bloggers if they would be interested in interviewing you. What’s the worse thing that can happen… they’ll say no?

Big marketing idea #21: Pay with a tweet

If you want more customers, then entice people to promote your company. Simply Measured does a great job of this by letting you signup for free if you tweet about their product. And as more people tweet, more people come to their website and signup. And once you are in their system, they get you hooked onto their software and they upsell you into paid plans.

Start thinking outside of the box. Free users can market your company for you with a tweet, a plug on Facebook or any other social site. You just have to be willing to ask them for a plug on these social sites or else you won’t receive them.

My business partner and I did something similar on Crazy Egg recently and it worked out well. Instead of asking people to pay with a tweet, we asked customers to tweet right after they signed up.

Conclusion

Marketing doesn’t have to cost money… it just requires creativity. If thousands of companies as well as I were able to succeed without having the budget to spend money on marketing, you can too.

You just have to be willing to put in the time and energy. Because if you aren’t willing to spend big bucks, you’re going to have to be the one who puts in the time.

21-Sep-11 3:00 PM

40 Under 40 Awards

noemail@earthwormjobs.com — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 12:00:00 GMT

Press Release June 16, 2008 Lincoln, Nebraska. On May 30, 2008, Jeremy Hunt president of Hunt Irrigation, Inc, and president and founder of Earthwormjobs.com was awarded the prestigious 40 under 40 award by the Lincoln Business Journal along with 39 other young entrepreneurs, executives and professional men and women in the Lincoln and Southeast Nebraska area. When Jeremy Hunt started the irrigation company that bears his name 11 years ago, it was basically a one-man show. With the help of his wife and family, the business has grown to include four full-time employees and six to eight seasonal workers. Hunt Irrigation’s growth was due to his reputation for quality work and water conservation. In just two years of operation Hunt Irrigation was voted Irrigation Company of the Year. Jeremy and Hunt Irrigation, Inc. focus has always been on water conservation, the systems he designs and his company install, along with the components he utilizes conserve between 50,000 and 120,000...

Earthwormjobs.com Adds New Features

noemail@earthwormjobs.com — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 10:00:00 GMT

March 24, 2008 Lincoln NE. In an effort to continually raise the level of professionalism and overall visibility of the Green/Golf Industry Earthwormjobs.com has added new features to our website. One of the new features is our education page. Earthwormjobs.com now list many of the university and colleges that offer programs and or degrees in the Green/Golf Industry. Along with the listings are program descriptions as well as department heads and their contact information.

Earthwormjobs.com has also began to populate the site with associations from all areas of the Green/Golf Industry, ranging from irrigation and landscape to arborist and horticulture, just to name a few. We hope to have this list compiled by April 1, 2008.

Another great feature is the additions to our certification page. We now host the schedule to some of the industries major certification schedules including the Irrigation Association, PLANET (The Landcare Network) and the Rainbird Academy.

Jeremy Hunt founder of Earthwormjobs.com, states “We are currently looking at adding yet another round of features that will supply the Green/Golf Industry Professional with the information he or she needs to set their company apart from the competition. It is my hope that Earthwormjobs.com will become one of the industry leaders in providing not only the Green/Golf Industry professional a way to find highly qualified employees through our job boards, but also supply them with great information that effects their industry everyday. It is our responsibility to become good stewards of our industry and those natural resources that we use everyday”.

Earthwormjobs.com Begins New Era in Green Industry

noemail@earthwormjobs.com — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 19:00:00 GMT

Lincoln, Nebraska - On November 2nd, of this year, Earthworm Jobs will launch its premier job hiring website strictly for the green industry, one of the fastest growing trades in the US. This new job-hiring site will boast the most complete and comprehensive all-in-one site on the web bringing together professionals from every aspect of the environmentally friendly Green Industry. The site will feature both the white collar and blue collar occupations within the Green Industry, including manufacturing, distributing, and consulting to each of the individual disciplines. The highlighted disciplines will include everything from irrigation, landscaping and arborist positions, to herbicide and pesticide applicators, just to name a few. It will also offer an array of information on certification programs, career advice, a message board and links to different scholastic formats that specialize in the Green Industry trades. President and Founder of Earthworm Jobs, Jeremy Hunt (CIC, CLIA),...

Landscape Foreman

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 06:00:00 GMT

Title: Landscape Foreman
Description:

Landscape installation foreman in the Greater Austin Texas area

Required Experience:
This Job Requires the Follow Skills:

Must be experienced in the installation of trees and shrubs, grading, drainage, sod installation, some flat work and wall construction, and overall crew and job management. Must posess valid TDL. EOE and pre-employment background and drug screening. Competitive wages and benefits.

Education Required:
Planned Duration of Employment: Full Time
Position reports to: Landscape Dept Manager

Contact info:

Hank Rutkowski (Add to Contacts)

ABC Home & Commercial Services

9475 E Hwy 290

Austin, Texas 78724
USA

Irrigation Service Technician

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 06:00:00 GMT

Title: Irrigation Service Technician
Description:

Large locally owned lawn and landscape company seeks qualified irrigation technicians for work in the Greater San Antonio area. Duties to include inspection and repair of residential and commercial irrigation systems. Must be licensed with the State of Texas and have a minimum of 2 years experience. Experience with inspection and installation of drip irrigation systems a plus.

Must have valid TDL. EOE all applicants must submit to pre-employment background and drug screening. Competitive wages and benefits. Submit resume to hrutkowski@goanteater.com

Required Experience:
Education Required:
Planned Duration of Employment: Full Time
Position reports to: Landscape Dept Manager

Contact info:

Hank Rutkowski (Add to Contacts)

ABC Home & Commercial Services

9475 E Hwy 290

Austin, Texas 78724
USA

Lawn Sprinkler Technician

Tue, 24 Jan 2012 06:00:00 GMT

Title: Lawn Sprinkler Technician Description: SunCo Grounds Management is looking for an experienced technician to complete commercial and residential underground sprinkler service. Required Experience: Candidates must have 2-3 years experience in the lawn sprinkler industry, a valid driver's license with a good driving record, positive attitude, good communication skills, and work well within a team atmosphere. This Job Requires the Follow Skills: Duties and Responsibilities: Manage client relationships. Assist in maintaining safety. Maintain high quality standards. Complete appropriate paperwork accurately and on time. Maintain company standards for trucks, equipment and tools. Perform other duties that may be assigned to aid in the productions and profitability of the company. Physical Requirements: Must be able to stand and/or walk for long periods of time while completing other duties and responsibilities. Regularly required to stand, walk, stoop, kneel,...

Shipping Department Supervisor

Thu, 19 Jan 2012 06:00:00 GMT

Title: Shipping Department Supervisor Description: Willoway Nurseries has an immediate opening for a Shipping Department Supervisor at our Huron facility. The Shipping Department at the Huron facility consists of inside and outside docks where full semi loads of live plant material are processed and shipped to customers located throughout the country. Job Responsibilities: Coordinate pulling crews for orders and replacement plants as needed. Coordinate loading crews to load orders onto corresponding trucks. Process truck load paperwork according to company procedures. Monitor and oversee quality of shipments of various sizes and varieties of plant material to provide 100% satisfaction to customers. Maintain the cleanliness and organization of the dock area. Assist crews in loading trucks. Supervisory Responsibilities: Oversight: 1-2 full time employees in Quality...

Landscape Crew Leader

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 06:00:00 GMT

Title: Landscape Crew Leader Description: Landscape Crew Leader: Lawrence Landscape, Inc, is a 25 year old, full-service landscape design/ build/ maintenance company. We are expanding our crew to meet the demand for our services! You would have the opportunity to work with a driven and energetic team determined to provide the most creative and budget-friendly landscape solutions for our clients. Our projects run the gamut from basic drainage solutions to complete outdoor living environments. *Must complete drug screening prior to work *Bilingual in English/ Spanish (preferred) Visit our website, http://lawrencelandscape.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=95&Itemid=155 to download our Lawrence Landscape application. Fax it to 785-843-6524, mail or drop off at 600 Lincoln Street Lawrence, KS 66044. Required Experience: *Proven leadership experience- 1-2 years minimum experience. *Knowledge of local plants and hardscape materials and their...

Landscape Design/ Sales

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 06:00:00 GMT

Title: Landscape Design/ Sales Description: Landscape Sales Design: Lawrence Landscape, Inc, is a 25 year old, full-service landscape design/ build/ maintenance company. We are expanding our crew to meet the demand for our services! You would have the opportunity to work with a driven and energetic team determined to provide the most creative and budget-friendly landscape solutions for our clients. Our projects run the gamut from basic drainage solutions to complete outdoor living environments. *Seeking an experienced landscape designer/ sales with 5-10 years design and sales experience. *Knowledge of plant material, hardscape construction, irrigation, drainage and lighting. *Knowledge of CAD design programs including: Dynascape, ProLandscape, Google Sketchup *Primary responsibilities include CAD landscape design and residential design sales. Must have proven sales ability, customer skills and be a team player. Bi-lingual Spanish/ English a plus! ...

Pond Champion

Fri, 13 Jan 2012 06:00:00 GMT

Title: Pond Champion Description: 1.Provides In-Store Customer Service for Wholesale & Retail Customers a.Strives to maintain a high level of customer satisfaction b.Provides (but not limited to) the following assistance to customers i.Customer Care ii.Project Inspiration iii.Technical Product Knowledge iv.Estimates of customer projects v.Installation instruction vi.Order fulfillment c.Instrumental in the development of customers i.Maturing the purchases of homeowners ii.Developing & supporting the relationship with Contractors. d.Supports Landscape Salespersons in selling water garden equipment to their customers e.Increases existing customer's product purchased from Hedberg f.Maintains regular contact with customers g.Promotes sales of other Hedberg product lines including: Landscape, Fabrication, Masonry and Engraving h.Assists at City Desks with customer order fulfillment / processing. i.Continuously builds industry knowledge & skills as well as...

ACCOUNTING/OFFICE MANAGER

Fri, 13 Jan 2012 06:00:00 GMT

Title: ACCOUNTING/OFFICE MANAGER
Description:

perform routine accounting activities such as maintenance of general ledger, preparation of various accounting statements, financial reports and accounts payable and receivable functions. Answer phones as needed. help with the scheduling of sprinkler tech. administrative duties as needed. use experience and judgment to plan and accomplish goals. prepare quarterly and year end taxes for accountant. handle bi-weekly payroll and taxes. handle human resource situations as they come up.

Required Experience:

must be familiar with standard concepts, practices and procedures within the landscaping field.

This Job Requires the Follow Skills:

must be able to deal with the public in a professional manner. Spanish speaking a bonus.

Education Required:
Planned Duration of Employment: Full Time
Salary($): 30,000 - 40,000
Position reports to: Owner

Contact info:

Graham MacGregor (Add to Contacts)

HURR Sprinkler & Landscape LLC

1533 Taurus Court Suite 100

Loveland, CO 80537

Nursery Assistant

Fri, 13 Jan 2012 06:00:00 GMT

Title: Nursery Assistant Description: 1.Provides In-Store Customer Service for Wholesale & Retail Customers a.Maintain a high level of customer satisfaction. b.Provides (but not limited to) the following assistance to customers i.Customer Care ii.Project Inspiration iii.Technical Product Knowledge iv.Plant Maintenance v.Installation Instructions vi.Order Fulfillment 2.Supports Landscape Salesperson by a.Helping fulfill orders for delivery and pick-up b.Answering technical questions c.Promotes sales of other Hedberg product lines including: Landscape, Fabrication, Masonry 3.Assisting at City Desks with customer order fulfillment / processing. 4.Additional responsibilities include (but not limited to) a.Continuously builds industry knowledge & skills as well as share expertise with others b.Staff promotional events when needed ...

Service Tech.

Wed, 14 Dec 2011 06:00:00 GMT

Title: Service Tech. Description: Due to growth, we are currently seeking irrigation technician(s) to join our team at our home office of Lincoln, NE. If you are a hard working and a dedicated team player with a commitment to excellence, consider joining the Hunt Irrigation, Inc. team! Hunt Irrigation, Inc. is one of Lincoln's most innovative sprinkler companies. We are committed to the intelligent use of water using the latest water smart products available. We strive for long term relationships with our customers and provide the consumer with the highest quality service and product line available. Hunt Irrigation, Inc. was built with a Commitment to Excellence... excellent people, excellent clients and with excellent results. We are a leader in the irrigation industry in the State of Nebraska, recognized as one of the top 50 companies in Nebraska. Hunt Irrigation, Inc. is a full service commercial/residential irrigation company...

Plant care specialist or landscape designer

Wed, 24 Aug 2011 22:00:00 GMT

Desired Position Title: Plant care specialist or landscape designer Experience: Green Industry Experience The Scotts Company (8 months) - Worked as a temp in both Lawncare and retail divisions. Lawncare Position: Lawncare Technician - Drove to customers addresses and performed turf practices such as seeding, fertilization, weed treatment and insect treatment, and aeration. - Talked to customers and addressed customer concerns - Performed Service calls Retail Position: Vendor and Sales associate - Drove to retailers of Scotts, Miracle Gro and Ortho products - Built displays, unloaded trucks, stocked product - Answered potential customer questions about Scotts products B.E. Landscaping (4 years) Position: Crew Foreman, and Designer - Performed and oversaw landscape projects such as cleanups, installations and general propery maintenance - Performed turf care practices such as mowing,...

golf course/irrigation tech management/construction

Mon, 08 Aug 2011 22:00:00 GMT

Desired Position Title: golf course/irrigation tech management/construction Experience: Mark F. Huffaker PO BOX 990582 Redding, CA 96099-0582 530-949-4582 mfhuffaker@hotmail.com PROFILE A Golf Course Designer, Builder, Manager, Technician, with extensive experience in private and public golf service industries. Successful at creating and implementing management development and employee involvement programs which resulted in productivity improvement. Works well with all levels of management to create an environment of openness and trust. EDUCATION 2000 University of Arizona Tucson, AZ Mlarch Landscape Architecture 1982 California State University, Chico Chico, CA BA International Relations Minor ...

Water Resource Consultant

Wed, 22 Jun 2011 15:00:00 GMT

Desired Position Title: Water Resource Consultant Experience: 2008 - Present Water in Motion, Inc. Plymouth, MN General Manager/ Water Resource Consultant High efficiency landscape irrigation design including rainwater collection and ET based irrigation. Construction management. Irrigation auditing Applied technologies and contract-based water management services. - -- Company owned weather stations. 2003 - Present Irrigation Otto Big Lake, MN Owner Full service landscape irrigation design, installation and maintenance service firm. Landscape irrigation design. Irrigation auditing. Irrigation training and curriculum development. 2000 - 2003 Irrigation By Design, Inc. Plymouth, MN Lead Service Technician Troubleshooting, management and maintenance of residential and commercial irrigation systems. Layout and...

horticulture management

Tue, 17 May 2011 17:00:00 GMT

Desired Position Title: horticulture management Experience: 335 Carroll Street San Antonio, Texas cell: (210)473-1266 LEEMAN49ER@AOL.COM Objective An aggressive and success-oriented professional seeking a position in the horticultural Industry offering both challenge and growth. Education Palo Alto College, San Antonio, Texas 2008-2011 Associate of Applied Science Major- Landscape and Horticultural Science GPA 3.0 Relevant Experience Palo Alto College Horticulture Club Vice-President Proficient with Microsoft Office ( Word, Excel, Access) Volunteer - San Antonio Botanical Gardens Volunteer- Headwaters Coalition/ Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word Volunteer- design project for San Antonio State Hospital, San Antonio, Texas Volunteer-...

Manager

Sat, 19 Feb 2011 14:00:00 GMT

Desired Position Title: Manager Experience: Nov2009- Present OneTwoTreeInc. Miami,Fl BranchManager-SprayDivision · Responsible forexecuting annualbudgetincluding Pand L responsibilities. · Comply with all laws and regulations governing the pest management businessin branch operations. · Maintaintightchemicalcontrolstoavoidwasteandoverusebytrackingchemicalto revenue percent,daily,weeklyand monthly · Monitorproperlaborexpense and minimize overtime byproperroutingandscheduling. · Reviewdailyproductionreportsandforecastrevenueproductionbasedonavailability, salesand employee performance. · Monitorandmaintain propercompletion percentage ofeveryround · Ensure allcallbacksare handled daily,andtake priorityoveranyotherservice. · Call all cancellingcustomerspersonallyandtryto savethose customers. · ...

Class Registration Page

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 16:27:18 GMT

Our Partners: eeeeComfort Inn and VCoFebruary 6th thru February 9th Comfort Inn and Convention Center 7007 Grover Street, Omaha, NE 68106 ALL CLASSES ARE FREE TO ATTEND! Click on your class below to REGISTER! Monday February 6, 2012 8:00 am - 10:00 am - Positive Communication Practices 8:30 am - 12:00 pm - Sales and Use Tax 10:00 am - 12:00 pm - What Banks Expect in Hard Economical Times 1:00 pm - 5:00 pm - Sales and Use Tax - Microenterprise & Construction Contractors 1:00 pm - 5:00 pm - Turf Management **Approved for Omaha Plumbing Board CEU (4) Hours and NE State Applicators License (4) Hours Tuesday February 7, 2012 8:00 am - 10:00 am - Business Insurance 101 8:00 am - 10:00 am - Hardscape 101 9:00 am - 11:00 am - Beginner Ponds and Pond...

Class Itinerary

Fri, 13 Jan 2012 15:56:10 GMT

Our Partners: Monday February 6, 2012 8:00 am - 10:00 am - Positive Communication Practices 8:30 am - 12:00 pm - Sales and Use Tax 10:00 am - 12:00 pm - What Banks Expect in Hard Economical Times 1:00 pm - 5:00 pm - Sales and Use Tax - Microenterprise & Construction Contractors 1:00 pm - 5:00 pm - Turf Management **Approved for Omaha Plumbing Board CEU (4) Hours and NE State Applicators License (4) Hours Tuesday February 7, 2012 8:00 am - 10:00 am - Business Insurance 101 8:00 am - 10:00 am - Hardscape 101 9:00 am - 11:00 am - Beginner Ponds and Pond Free Systems **Approved for 2 Omaha Plumbing Board CEU Hours 10:00 am - 12:00 am - DOT 11:00 am - 1:00 pm - Plant Varieties 12:00 pm - 2:00 pm - Irrigation Two Wire **Approved for 2 Omaha Plumbing Board & Irrigation Association CEU Hours 1:00 pm - 3:00 pm - Wage and Hour Practices 1:00 pm - 3:00 pm - Dealing with Difficult...

Christmas Around the World

Thu, 22 Dec 2011 16:56:51 GMT

Christmas celebrations around the world It is interesting to see how different countries celebrate Christmas. We asked some of our friends to explain what happens in their countries. This is what they told us: Belgium On the sixth of December Sinterklaas or Saint-Nicholas is celebrated, which is an entirely different holiday from Christmas. Santa Claus in Belgium is called de Kerstman or le Père Noël and he does come around on Christmas day to bring children presents. There are different cultures in Belgium, the Northern part being Vlaanderen (speaking a Dutch dialect), the Southern part being Wallonie (speaking a French dialect) and the Eastern part speaking German. Small family presents are given at Christmas too, under the tree, or in stockings near the fire-place, to be found in the morning. Christmas breakfast is a special sweet...

How FDR Changed Thanksgiving

Wed, 23 Nov 2011 20:14:35 GMT

Jennifer Rosenberg U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt had a lot to think about in 1939. The world had been suffering from the Great Depression for a decade and the Second World War had just erupted in Europe. On top of that, the U.S.economy continued to look bleak. So when U.S.retailers begged him to move Thanksgiving up a week to increase the shopping days before Christmas, he agreed. He probably considered it a small change; however, when FDR issued his Thanksgiving Proclamation with the new date, there was an uproar throughout the country. The First Thanksgiving As most schoolchildren know, the history of Thanksgiving began when Pilgrims and Native Americans gathered together to celebrate a successful harvest. The first Thanksgiving was held in the fall of 1621, sometime between September 21 and November 11, and was a three-day feast. The Pilgrims were joined by approximately 90 of the local Wampanoag tribe, including Chief Massasoit,...

Press Release

Tue, 04 Oct 2011 21:01:30 GMT

Earthwormjobs.com Announces the Promotion of

Sonya Smeal Hunt and Danielle Bauer

Founder Jeremy Hunt will continue to be a big part of Earthwormjobs.com as the vice president; however Sonya Smeal Hunt and Danielle Bauer will be taking care of the day- to-day operations.

Earthwormjobs.com specializes in Education and Job Facilitation for the Green Industry. For more information contact Sonya at Sonya@earthwormjobs.comor Danielle at Danielle@earthwormjobs.com

We congratulate Sonya Smeal Hunt and Danielle Bauer and look forward to the prosperous future of Earthwormjobs.com under their guidance.

Excel Example

Thu, 22 Sep 2011 01:31:02 GMT

Click on Link - Hope this will help!

Education Week

Wed, 24 Aug 2011 02:22:16 GMT

Please Join Us!

Come attend the Earthwormjobs.com 4^thAnnual Education Week, February 6^ththrough 9^th.

We will again be hosting a wide array of Green Industry classes. Along with our informative How-To classes we will also be featuring a number of Business classes.

Many of the Green Industry classes have been approved for CEU’s. Some of those available are from the Omaha Plumbing Board, State of Nebraska Applicators License, The Irrigation Association and PLANET CEU’s.

Along with our Education Week, we will also be hosting a New Product Show from 10:00 am to 6:00 pm on Tuesday, February 7^th, then again from 10:00 am to 6:00 pm on Wednesday, February 8^th. There will be both local and national vendors on hand to showcase their new and innovative products for the 2012 season. Each vendor will also be signing lottery tickets. Visit each booth and you will be entered into the Grand Prize Drawing.

We will also be hosting a silent auction. Auction items will be on view by the registration table. Place your bid on the way in. All proceeds go to our 2012 Scholarship Fund!

We look forward to seeing you there!

Education Week Flyer

Fri, 19 Aug 2011 02:48:31 GMT

Click on Link to View and Download

Thu, 11 Aug 2011 19:48:12 GMT

Be Proactive. Get Noticed. Build your Brand. Strengthen your Bonds. Build your Business. Mark your calendars. Earthwormjobs.com 4th Annual Education Week will be held February 6th thru February 9th at the Comfort Inn & Suites in Omaha, Nebraska. As is in the past we will be offering classes in Irrigation, Turf, Nursery, Pumps, Backflow and Lighting. However, this year we have added Business classes. Earthwormjobs.com is also proud to announce that we will be offering a trade show again this year. The trade show will be held Tuesday, the 7th from 10:00 am until 6:00 pm, and will resume Wednesday, the 8th from 10:00 am until 6:00 pm. We will be sponsoring a Vendor Appreciation immediately following the tradeshow Wednesday, February 8th. Position your company with Earthwormjobs.com, its members, and fellow green industry professionals in the Central Plains. The Earthwormjobs.com membership is a diverse group of green industry professionals...

IA CEU Requirements

Tue, 08 Mar 2011 14:48:52 GMT

Irrigation Association Qualifying Continuing Education Units (CEU) Irrigation Association Certifications CAP: No cap (maximum) on the number of CEUs per year earned in this category QUALIFYING 20 CEUs earned for becoming a CID ACTIVITY: 10 CEUs earned for additional CID specialties 10 CEUs earned for becoming a CIC, CLIA, CGIA, CAIS, CLWM Irrigation Association Leadership Roles CAP: A maximum of 5 CEUs per year can be earned in this category CEUs in this category are earned at the rate 1 CEU per hour of attendance QUALIFYING Serving as a board member on an IA affiliate local or state irrigation association ACTIVITY: Serving as a board member or chair/vice chair of a committee with the Irrigation Association Serving as a non‐compensated member of a state irrigation licensing board or committee ...

Earthwormjobs New Site

noemail@earthwormjobs.com — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 18:00:00 GMT

Objectives: This is a test Survey to see how it functions and to track the results.

Release Date: 24-Sep-07 1:00 PM
Expiration Date: 23-Oct-07 10:00 PM
Select you best response.

Lorem ipsum survey

noemail@earthwormjobs.com — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 18:53:45 GMT

Objectives:

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Release Date: 10-Sep-07 1:53 PM
Expiration Date: 10-Dec-07 1:53 PM

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Warren Thoma Booth

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 18:59:08 GMT