Category: Entrepreneurship

Small Business Saturday

Posted on by Brian Lee

I like the idea of Small Business Saturday. For those unfamiliar, it was started two years ago by American Express to support small businesses between Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

When you make a purchase from a small business, it helps their bottom line by a much greater percentage than a big box retailer’s. Same in my industry. When we land a contract, it has a larger positive effect on our company than for a large agency.

Of course, I’m not advocating a total avoidance on big box retailers–after all, they were small businesses at some point. But when you can, buy something from a local merchant.

Some people weren’t made to network

Posted on by Brian Lee

This week, I was talking to someone at a networking event, when another person butted in and joined our conversation. A general rule of networking is that you leave two people alone, and that faux pas should have warned me about how rude this person was. After I nicely introduced myself to him, he mentioned his company already has a relationship with another agency, and that he wouldn’t be a good candidate for my business. WOW.

I’m about building relationships at networking events, not doing hard sales. I don’t see many other agency people at events, and the few that are there follow the same rules I do. Thus, I don’t know what would make this guy say that, other than he was just an asshole. Here’s to hoping karma comes back to haunt him.

Heard of spell check?

Posted on by Whitney Trotta

Spelling and grammatical errors- there is nothing less professional when it comes to emails sent to a client (well, unless you drop the f-bomb, which is never a good idea!).

Intra-office communication generally has a more casual tone then emails sent to clients, but sometimes it can go too far. I’ve made some pretty embarrassing spelling errors in my day, but when did we get so lazy that people don’t read over an email briefly before they send it? We are all guilty of getting sloppy in communication when it is between friends and co-workers, but habits breed habits! If on a daily basis you send emails that are poorly written and contain errors, you are more likely to do the same with clients.

No one is perfect, and spelling/grammar errors are bound to happen. However nothing is worse than receiving an email from someone you are trusting with your money and time, and they do not even value you enough to check for spelling errors.

Why not get in the good habit of always writing professional, edited emails? That way you are guarunteed not to turn off a client simply because you spelled guaranteed wrong!

Now for some Charlie Brown…