Open For Business

Just because you get to the top of the mountain doesn’t mean you can stay there. Bad style had the proverbial door hitting CEO Bill Johnson on his way out.

North Carolina Utilities Commission Board of Directors fired CEO Bill Johnson 20 minutes after the $32 billion merger of Duke Energy and Progress Energy. Why? Because the Board “felt Johnson’s style was too autocratic and discouraged different points of view”.

Good leadership characteristics and bad leadership characteristics can be hidden, especially when you reach high levels of compensation. Great leaders create cultures where employees feel free to speak up rather than merely “buying in” to the vision and mission.

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Dr Stephen Covey passed away on Monday the 16th of July. We reviewed his "7 Habits of Highly Effective People” and the relevance today. Hear Tony Robbins reaction to the passing of Covey.

Seth Godin recently was explored “Making money in the digital world!” Godin’s blog entry on monetizing digital attention explains the odd paradigm that has developed in digital content creation. It appears, says Godin, that most everyone wants a business where they sit at home, develop content, put it on the web, and have people pay them scads of money for it. But there's a trick they miss -- how to sell it online!

Managing your online reputation: oh heck, really, we have to do this? Tommy had discovered in the July/August edition of Inc Magazine an article by John Brandon. Brandon explores in depth in his article how he manages his online reputation by using two separate services. The first one iswww.socialmention.com which is a free service and the second is www.myreputation.com which is approximately $99 for a year. These services essentially “comb” the web looking for anything and everything that has been written about you and or your business. Brian thinks it's a scam. Find out why.

I sure hope we don’t need a bank loan soon, because last night on Open for Business Tom Russo, Brian Parker and Ken Cook dove deep into the lack of lending by financial institutions. Businesses want to grow and there are thousands of them across the country who could grow with a little more capital behind them.

There are hundreds of millions of dollars on bank balance sheets that are not getting to these businesses. Why not? In a sentence, because banks don’t have to lend the money to make money. Citing examples from big banks, local banks, and credit unions the discussion highlighted again and again that the banks are not in the customer service business. They are in the make money business. They want to give great customer service. They just don’t have to in order to make money.

Tune in to hear more about the fascinating revelation on the disconnect between a bank’s brand image and its’ “on the street” practices. Open for Business #38 – more great information than you could hope for in less than an hour.

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The latest edition of Open for Business focused exclusively on Customer Service; what does it look like, how do you deliver it, and what should be the expectations? Tom Russo, Brian Parker, and Ken Cook challenged assumptions, questioned the “unreasonable” expectations of customers, and wondered, in the end, whether great customer service is worth it.

After an engaging 45 minutes the definitive answer is YES, great customer service is worth it. Jessica Davis and Duke Cajala, two of Zappos.com’s Customer Loyalty Team Managers joined us and helped explain, at least from Zappos’ perspective, why they embrace customer service as the cornerstone for everything the company does.

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This segment of “Open For Business” features Dr. Bruce Stein speaking with Ken Cook & Tommy Russo. Bruce is the Executive Director of Vanishing Veins & Vivesse, both located in the greater Hartford area.

Bruce shares with Ken & Tommy how he made the decision to retire from his practice as a Gastroenterologist and turn his focus and energies to the marketing of the two practices that he and his wife, Dr Lori Greenwald, co-own!

Bruce shares in detail the conscious decision that he and Lori made, at the beginning of the recession, to increase their advertising/marketing budget. They were convinced, against all popular believe, that there was still significant demand in their trading area for the services their two practices provide. Their bold move absolutely paid off as they watched their businesses grow market share from one campaign to the next.

The interview explores some of the FREE online tools Bruce employs to learn more about their patient base and then take that knowledge to better market to them. And underlying all of these marketing efforts is Bruce’s dedication to strategic planning. Strategic planning is a big part of the reason why the two practices continue to experience growth and because of it, as Bruce shares, they are adding new services on a semi-regular basis.

Bruce epitomizes that you don’t need a degree in marketing to be able to market with the best of them. No matter what your business is this “Open For Business” segment will motivate you to hunker down and teach yourself how to market and promote your business more effectively and subsequently successfully!

Guest Expert:

Having a website is just good business sense, right? Ten years ago, we all questioned why we need a website. Now APPs are the fad. Do we need a website and an APP?

To answer this (or just further grapple with) Matt Sevice explains the trend and score card of open vs close internet experiences. The "walled garden" days of AOL could be coming back. Does this add security? Does this diminish freedoms?

When it comes to exiting from their most valuable asset, their business, 90% of business owners do little to no planning. Last night on Open for Business Ken Savino, Partner with North Star Wealth Partners, joined Tom Russo and Ken Cook to explore why.

Ken Savino believes you should start your thinking and planning for an exit around 10 years from the date you desire to leave. Yet so few owners do. And there is an ever increasing number of baby boomers who own businesses, and they are all reaching the age where continuing to run their company is becoming less and less appealing.

The negative repercussions from not planning can be many, and definitely not good. Having to sell below market value, settle for poor contract terms, or lay off employees are just a few of the unfortunate outcomes. Listen in as Tom Russo, Ken Cook and Ken Savino help you avoid these pitfalls and plan for a better result.

Mark Zuckerburg, Tom Houge’s coming up behind you. Sean Parker, Tom Houge’s Fipeo.com is better than your Airtime.com, and Tom built it for less than 1% of the $33.5 million you invested to launch Airtime.

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Tom Houge is the co-founder of Fipeo.com and he was Tom Russo and Ken Cook’s guest this week on Open for Business. Tom represents what is great and innovative about the start-up world. Fipeo is a video chat platform that takes Facebook’s 4.74 degrees of separation and reduces it to zero. Unlike its’ massively funded competitor Airtime, Fipeo zealously guards privacy yet connects people and resources with real connections via video. Fipeo’s applications and revenue opportunities are abundant.

While discussing Houge’s start-up journey what also came to light are the serious shortcomings in the start-up environment in CT. Where start-up environments thrive around the world there exists a passion from all stakeholders, and a earnest curiosity that needs to be satisfied. Houge’s experience in CT makes it painfully evident that passion and curiosity are not at the forefront of the state’s initiatives to foster start-ups.

Tune into to Tom Russo and Ken Cook’s fascinating conversation; hear about the birth of potentially the next Facebook; hear how the start-up environment in CT cannot sustain what Fipeo needs.

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It’s not alchemy. It’s not having a money tree. It’s crowdfunding – the latest means for entrepreneurs or anyone with an idea or project to get funding. Tom Russo and Ken Cook had as their guest this week on Open for Business Bob Metzler, an attorney and Principal with Cohn, Birnbaum & Shea in Hartford. Bob has looked long and hard at crowdfunding, what it entails, and what the roadblocks for it might be.

Simply put, crowdfunding solicits “contributions” over the web. Using a portal such as kickstarter.com, you list your project, how much money you want, and ask for it. For a company called Pebble Watch it was a “home run”. They wanted $100,000 to develop and launch their new “programmable face” watch. Using crowdfunding they now have $10,266,845. And for all of that money Pebble Watch gives up no equity. They give individual contributors just watches (in some cases lots of watches).

And the equity question is where the problems start. The investment industry talked to the SEC and they talked to Congress and now everyone has their hand in the mix. Legislation is flying about and exactly how things will turn out is yet to be determined. Tune into Open for Business as Tom Russo, Ken Cook and Bob Metzler explore all of it, and provide you the most informed and up to date information.

You hear their commercials everywhere. A great rags to riches story, hear how Dr. Abbas Mohammadi, DDS started with only $200 in his pocket and sleeping in his car, learned some valuable lessons from unrelated businesses, and why working 7 days a weeks isn’t like working 7 days a week.

Home Depot amazes the DDS: the scope of products available under one roof.

Inspiration of Leonardo da Vinci saying “simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”

Tom and Ken explored the journey with Dr. Mohammadi. Take a listen as he explains